The Serpent's Garden
by Dragonofshadows115
Summary: An ancient spirit, the first poisoner, demigod ruler of an empire. A child raised to be a sacrifice for the Greater Good. One achieved greatness with no mother to comfort her. Another might have. Now he will have no need to. Rated for child abuse (short-lived) and character death. AU. Dead. Up for adoption.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** Before I get hated on for leaving I, Leviathan alone while I work on this, allow me to explain. I have contracted that most horrible of maladies, writer's block, and have been beating my head on my desk over that story for far, _far_ too long. I hoped that taking up something else in the meantime might help relieve some of my writer's block. I do intend to return to it, it may simply take a while before I am fit to. This fic will probably have shorter chapters that I, Leviathan but should (hopefully) be updated more often.

This fic is based on Iskander Mandoraekon's challenge: Harry Potter and the Heroes of Old.

 **Disclaimer:** I do not own the Harry potter franchise, nor do I own TYPE-MOON.

* * *

The five-year old harry Potter lay curled in a ball on the cold tiles of the Dursley kitchen and did his best to not cry out. Crying out made Uncle Vernon angry. "Freaks shouldn't talk" he said.

It was all the fault of that book he found outside the charity shop. He couldn't read all the little words, but all the pretty patterns and circles and stuff looked like something that Aunt Petunia might like. She liked patterns and stuff. He'd seen the little notebook she liked to draw in while Uncle Vernon watched the News in the evening.

He'd spent his only 50 pence on the book and taken it back home with the big bag of shopping for Aunt Petunia. He'd waited until after dinner, when his relatives were both full and happy-looking to give it to her. She'd taken it, opened the red leather cover and gasped, passing it to Uncle Vernon.

He'd turned almost as red as the book itself and Harry might have been tempted to laugh, had that not been the face that his uncle made when he was _truly_ angry.

The book was thrown to the floor and Harry was tempted to run for a moment, before his uncle put paid to that possibility by charging at him like a raging bull and catching the young boy on the shoulder with his meaty fist. Harry sprawled to the ground and brought his hands up to curl about his head, trying desperately to protect himself from the vicious kicks of his Uncle. As painful though, and all the deeper, were the wounds inflicted by his words.

"You wretched, good-for-nothing FREAK! You _DARE_ bring such unholiness into our house?! You dare spit on our hospitality?! After your worthless Freak parents died and left you here, not a penny to pay your way? We should have just sent you off to an orphanage! You want that?! You want to have the cane every day!"

" _Why can't I have someone to save me?."_ thought the boy, silent tears of mingled pain and misery mingling with " _Just leave me alone. I want someone to help me. Why won't anyone help me? Why won't anyone love me? That's all I want."_

Unnoticed by both man and boy, the lead-inlaid circle on the cover of the book began to glisten faintly, as if transmuting to mercury. Unfelt by any, a tendril of Miracle reached out, fuelled by a far-distant artefact of holy-yet-unholy power and the impossible-yet-trivial wish of a child. A prayer for salvation, by one who had never known its face.

* * *

Semiramis, Wise Queen of Assyria, daughter of the goddess Derketo and the first poisoner in the world sat upon the plain of glass that was the Throne of Heroes and reflected.

She knew not how long she had sat there, the only features on the shapeless plain the wandering souls of those who, like her, had wrought deeds so great or horrific that their very beings were sublimated into this form. A form beyond human but less than a god. A Heroic Spirit. But what meaning had time here? What worth was the power of a demigod on a plain of glass where all one could do is reflect on their past successes and triumphs?

The ancient queen chuckled bitterly to herself. Pathetic, that's what they were. Every hero as impotent as the next, for all their demigodly might.

Then she felt it.

A tug within her chest, as if a hook had been inserted there and was pulling at her heart. Curious at this new thing, the first in all her time on the Throne, the long-dead magus extended her mystical senses inwards, towards where the alien presence invaded her essence.

What she found there shocked her. Emotions flooded through the incomplete magic, which she now realised was an attempt to summon her. Desperation, terror and the oily taint of misery and despair. Above all, though, was the desperate hope for salvation, a childish wish for protection, a mother's warm arms to be enfolded and protected in. It was an ancient want, one attendant to humanity for endless ages. One which she herself had been denied by her goddess mother, Derketo.

That was what made up Semiramis' mind. She would not allow a child to suffer as she had in her childhood, deprived of motherly affection. Not if she could help.

So resolved, the first poisoner gripped the magic attempting to summon her and accepted it. The magic seemed to 'click' into place, and then the Throne of Heroes vanished from her sight.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** Here's the next chapter of The Serpent's Garden. I hope it finds you all in good spirits. Also, if any of you could take the time to post a few more reviews it will help me out with translating the crazy ideas I have spinning around inside my head into something vaguely comprehensible.

Some notes: First, with reference to the timelines of the various worlds, the timeline of Harry Potter has been moved up so that Harry is 15 by the time of the Fifth Grail War, meaning that he was born two years after Shirou, if I'm not mistaken.

Second, with reference to how Harry had the power to summon a Heroic Spirit outside the Grail War, this is to do with the nature and relationship of magic circuits and wizardry, and will be explained in the course of the story. Suffice to say that Harry is an aberration of sorts, not unlike how Shirou possesses magic circuits despite not coming from a magus lineage.

Third, the world in which this story is set incorporates both the Wizarding World and the various magi organisations. The two know of each other, but their mutual hubris and underestimation of the other side (just) prevents open conflict. Ordinarily, wizards cannot use magecraft or vice versa, although each can replicate the effects of the other to a degree with their own magic.

 **Disclaimer:** I own neither Harry Potter nor TYPE-MOON.

* * *

When the Servant known as Semiramis reappeared, it was to a drastically different reality.

She was in the shadows of a hallway, concealed by the darkness edged by yellow light radiating from a globe hanging from the ceiling - a light bulb, some outside force informed her. The house she stood in was strange to her sight. So distant in shape from the clay-brick cubes of her home city of Babylon. Information sprang to the forefront of her mind in reply to her curiosity. This was a middle-middle class house of the type common in England, a land far to the north of her home country. The horse-looking woman standing in the doorway was a housewife, her floral-pattern dress utterly unsuited for anything more strenuous than cooking dinner.

What truly occupied her attention, though, was the man of the house - although 'man' was a charitable name for such a hunk of blubber - and the black-haired child suffering his leather-reinforced kicks [in the back of her mind, a far-distant thing screamed MASTER upon the sight of the child]. Blood seeped sluggishly from a wound on the child's forehead, no doubt inflicted by the harsh impact of skull on floor.

Such a sight burned through the layers of 'detached queen' and 'merciless poisoner' that Semiramis had built around herself to reveal what lay beneath, a woman who had never had a mother to guard her. Seeing another in the same position - or worse - than that she had grown up in burnt through those walls of steel.

Succumbing to anger, though, would not befit a queen. The ancient spirit took a hold of her fury and forged it into an iron bar of resolve. She would free this child [MASTER] from these despicable excuses for humanity if it was the last thing she did.

Determined that she would not abandon this child, she stepped from the shadows, her shoes snapping smartly on the pale tiles. The horse-faced woman turned to look at her sharply, a gasp of intaken breath betraying her shock. The obese man took a moment longer, blinded as he was by his fury, but responded to his wife's startled stammers.

Semiramis let the sudden silence drag out, only punctuated by the near-inaudible sobs of the child on the floor. She took a sadistic pleasure in watching the blood drain from the adult's faces. Slowly, purposefully, she stepped towards the man and the boy on the floor. The younger of the two was slowly, tentatively lowering his arms from their protective cocoon around his head. The elder seemed to finally pluck up the courage to speak.

"Wh-who are you? Why are you in here? You've no right to come onto my private property!" the corpulent man tried to bluster. The effect was somewhat ruined by the way that pasty, corpselike white and splotches of angry red waged war over the flabby planes of his face.

"Why should I care more for your 'property' than you care for your own blood?" replied the queen.

"That freak's no family of ours!" raged the obese man, the red splotches winning the battle for dominance "He's just a bloody burden! We never wanted to take him in! He was just left on the damned doorstep!" At his feet, the twig-thin boy recoiled a little with every spiteful word, pulling himself up into an awkward sitting position with his arms drawing his knees up to his chin. His eyes were like twin shards of grass-green ice as he looked up at the altercation.

"Perhaps I could take him off your hands, then?" inquired the sorcerer-queen, weaving a weak glamour into her words to make them unnaturally persuasive. This had always been a specialty of hers, the subtle weaving of spells with only natural words for an aria, dripping them into the mids of her prey like venom into a cup of wine.

As she felt the spiderweb-delicate lattice of the spell settle on them, they seemed to stiffen for a moment before she felt what meagre will they could muster against her magic falter.

"You'll take the boy on?" asked the woman, speaking up for the first time. "I warn you, he's a troublemaker through and through." She seemed a little more reluctant than her husband. Perhaps some distorted vestige of her maternal instincts were shining through? Not enough to earn the Servant's mercy, at any rate.

Semiramis gave the pair a smile that had more of the snake in it than any kind of warmth.

"I'm _quite_ sure I'll manage."

She kneeled down to cup the boy's cheek in a single, pale hand. He shrank back from the contact, afraid. In her mind the Servant cursed the human-skinned monsters that had visited such torment upon a child, such that he would fear even a gentle touch.

"Be calm, child. No harm shall come to you while you remain in my protection." she softly reassured him. Some of the fear left his eyes and she began another glamour, one of sleep. "I shall guard you, child. Sleep soundly." She set the lattice of the spell on its way, letting it seep into his consciousness. The sorceress was surprised, though, to feel a resistance, beyond that of will. Where a strong will made it so that placing a glamour was like holding a rope fast against a flowing tide, this was like a fire, gnawing and biting at her bindings.

"An _agugiltu.*_ " murmured the sorceress to herself in wonder. Perhaps this was what the repulsive house owners had been referring to when they called the child a 'freak'. Regardless, the power of an untrained _agugiltu_ , even a powerful one such as this child was, was nothing before the enchantments of a mistress of the subtle magics and it took only a minimal exertion of prana to send the child to sleep.

He collapsed sideways into her waiting arms and with ease she caught him, hoisting him with her as she stood again, barely noticing the increase in weight. Truly, the benefits of a posthuman body were quite incredible. She turned to the pair in the doorway and, layering stronger compulsions of obedience on them, commanded them to bring her any of the boy's possessions.

"The boy hasn't anything." replied the husband, "Why should we have given him anything?"

"Very well then," replied Semiramis, "You shall give me all information you possess on the child and how he came to reside in your home."

"H-his name's Harry Potter," stammered the wife. "He's my sister's son. He was just left on our doorstep on the day after Halloween four years ago, in a little basket with a letter. It said that Lily and her freak husband had been killed and that we were the closest relatives. Y-you won't tell anyone about the boy, if you take him?"

"Where is this letter?" asked the ancient queen imperiously, ignoring the woman's plea.

Entwisted in the threads of glamour and compulsion, the woman was helpless to resist the command and retreated to the living room, where she retrieved a yellowed sheet from the bottom of a vase of dried flowers. Semiramis took it stowed it in the folds of her garment.

"Is there anything else that I need know?"

"You'll not bring the boy back?" asked the husband.

The ancient queen let loose a burst of mocking laughter. "Why would I?"

"Well, if he brings you trouble, on your head be it."

With a last contemptuous glance at the cowardly pair, the spirit left the house, emerging onto a row of seemingly identical dwells, as if each had been simply copied into the next space. The jaundiced light of sodium streetlamps blotted out any stars that might have peeked through the sparse clouds.

As she left the boundaries of the property, though, she felt the shift of an alien magic on her skin. She had crossed the threshold of a bounded field, a powerful one. It was such an incongruous thing to find in such a mundane locale, like finding a diamond among pigswill.

Maneuvering the child so that a hand was free, the sorceress ran the other through the mudras necessary to cast her simplest examination-spell, in order to divine the purpose of the field. More complex spells were unnecessary, as this magic had none of the subtlety of a spell raised by a magus. This was the work of an _agugiltu_ , like the boy himself.

Perhaps he was important to them? The Grail had informed her of their split from mundane society upon her discovery of the child's nature, though, and she could see no reason for an important child to be raised apart from the society that he was valued by. That was contradicted, though, by the blatantly protective nature of the bounded field encircling the house, though.

It was the poor fortune of the occupants, the Assyrian poisoner thought, that the strength of the field was far from great enough to stymie the curse of a sorceress of the Age of the Gods, empowered by the prana generation of an _agugiltu_ and with more than enough malice to put into her magic.

Switching from the tongue she had spoken with the occupants of the house to the Akkadian of her lifetime, the ancient sorceress began to weave her curse.

"A curse be upon this house and its keepers. Let it drip into their bread and meat, taint their words and their prosperities. Let it make them strange and abandoned by their fellows. Let them be tormented as they have tormented their own blood. But allow them not the solace of death, nor the flight of cowards. Let them repay blood with blood tenfold."

Satisfied with her vengeance, for the moment, the Wise Queen of Assyria turned on her heel and left the whitewashed house behind.

* * *

*Wizard or sorcerer. Used to refer to Harry Potter-type wizards.

 **A/N:** Before anyone gets angry about it, Harry is _not_ going to be some kind of stupidly powerful super-wizard from birth. My rationale is something like this: a wizard's magic is powered by prana, similarly to magi, but unlike magi they do not possess magic circuits, but rather a magical core (cliché, I know). The core's purpose is twofold, to convert mana into od and storing that od. However, wizards cannot draw upon mana, nor manipulate prana in the same way as magi. What they can do is use their - by comparison - obscenely large reserves of od (for comparison, an average wizard possesses about 5000 units of od) to fuel their spells, which they shape through a system incorporating a focus (typically a wand), and will, with incantations and wand movements (or similar actions) serving to focus that will. This system allows wizards to accomplish magic which, to magi, would be exceedingly difficult or outright impossible by 'brute forcing' it with excessive amounts of prana.

The problem is that this system is extremely inefficient, as the very same 'brute force' technique that allows wizards their easy magic uses far more od for _everything_ , including things which magi would use orders of magnitude less for. The upshot of all this is that wizards are really good at sustaining large-scale magical existences (like, for example, Servants) but in terms of a magic-to-magic duel are about equal to magi or, perhaps, weaker, as their greater potential power is offset by an utter lack of subtlety and finesse in their magic.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N:** And thus I return, triumphant! Bow before me, puny mortals and offer up your reviews so that I may forge ever-greater works!

Ahem.

Anyway, I'm back. And for those interested parties, let me assure you that this is not going to be a godlike!Harry story, nor is it even going to be a particularly superpowered!Harry story (as much as that can be a thing while having him be the Master of a superhuman spirit with an EX ranked anti-world Noble Phantasm). That said, Harry will most _certainly_ not be a pushover when it comes to magic. He a prodigy in his own style of magecraft is what I'm aiming for, not unlike Rin with her Jewelcraft, as opposed to a Gary Stu.

 **Disclaimer:** I do not own TYPE-MOON or Harry Potter. I can only aspire to such greatness, and strive to claim that glory that lies beyond the horizon.

* * *

Truly, Semiramis mused, this was an age where the cunning were the masters.

Her curiosity about the concept which the knowledge granted by the Grail termed the 'internet' had led to a research spree. It had opened her eyes to the new age, beyond the basic knowledge granted to her by virtue of her summoning.

An age where the feats of arms which had dominated her era were regarded as barbaric, things of the past and 'lesser nations'. An age where, for the right price, anything could be obtained. A world where magic was dismissed as fantasy, madness and the failed understanding of ancient minds.

This was an age where those with cunning, ruthlessness and the will to use whatever advantages they possessed to achieve their ends ruled, could become emperors in all but name. And what empires! Corporations and businesses, spread across the globe - a spherical world, how incredible! - extending arms and hands wherever profit can be found. That kind of domain was far more to her liking than the clunky Assyria she once ruled. A general she was, and a good one, but first and foremost she was a manipulator, an Assassin by virtue of her poisons, both of liquids and of words.

Yes, this world was perfectly suited to her style of ruling and she intended to conquer it in her own particular fashion.

Shaking off her fantasies of the possibilities of the reality she found herself in, the ancient queen turned her attentions to the child lying upon the opulent bed of the Royal Suite of the Corinthia hotel. The exorbitant price that the receptionist had asked had been easily dodged with a judicious application of magic and, although the arrangement would not be permanent, it was more than satisfactory for the time being. Truly, the amenities of this modern age were quite incredible.

The black-clothed spirit had perused the letter on the short train ride from Surrey to Greater London and its contents had been both enlightening and infuriating. According to the 'Albus Wulfric Percival Brian Dumbledore' who had penned the letter, young Harry's parents had been killed by a powerful 'wizard' - presumably the same thing as an _agugiltu_ \- and the occupants of the house (one Petunia and Vernon Dursley) were the next of kin. Furthermore, the letter asked that they take in the boy, along with a number of barely-veiled threats of what might happen if they did not do so.

In truth, Semiramis could see why they might be resentful of the boy, though it was by no means an excuse for their treatment of him.

The most important part of the missive, though, was the fact that it gave directions to the entrance to the 'Wizarding World', so that they might 'purchase Harry's school supplies, when the time came'. Such a locale warranted investigation, especially if the child had inherited assets or - even better - something analogous to a Magic Crest. If such a treasure did exist, allowing it to be lost would be unforgivable, both for the child himself and for his family's legacy.

Before such an expedition could be launched, though, the child's health had to be seen to. Rising from the cream-coloured armchair where she had ensconced herself, the magus made her way over to the bed where she had placed the child. Making sure that the spell which kept the boy asleep was still in effect, along with the minor cantrips keeping his injuries from further damage, she maneuvered him from his position to one where she could squirm her arms beneath his back and knees and hoist him from the bed.

She carried him easily over to the penthouse's luxurious bathroom and carefully deposited him in one of the bathtubs (although calling them simply a 'bathtub' would be not unlike calling the Star of Africa 'shiny'). Carefully, she removed the baggy, ill fitting clothes to reveal the child's body. The sight of his ribs, clearly visible through tight-stretched skin and the multitude of sickly greens and bruised purples running up his side made her want to return and reinforce the curse she had cast upon the house of the pigs (she had resolved to refer to them only as such, as they were unworthy of the name 'human'). Resting the boy's head on the side of the bath so that he was in a sitting position, she turned the taps, letting a cascade of lukewarm water slowly fill up the tub.

The preparation was necessary for her more powerful healing magics, as, while her powerful water alignment aided in such spells, her talents with regards to the human body were more in the realm of its degradation than in restoration. Still, she had a better knowledge of anatomy than many and such wounds, although unpleasant for the child, were well within her capabilities to heal.

In her mind, a drop of venom fell into a glass of wine and, at the moment of contact, she felt her magic circuits flare to life.

"Rain falls in the desert, flowers bloom beneath." muttered the revived magus in Akkadian. The aria was not strictly necessary for the working of this magic but it made the spell easier to cast and there was no reason not to use it.

The magic spread from her outstretched hands to envelop the semi-immersed child in a gentle wash of energy. It fused with the water and soothed the injuries that it touched. The unpleasant stains of burst blood vessels began to shrink before Semiramis' eyes, relinquishing their hold on Harry's body as they were beaten back by the spell. Cupping her hands together, the queen poured a small quantity of the faintly-glowing water over the cut on the child's forehead. As it did so, the ancient queen felt an abnormality in the prana flow there, as if some magic or entity was contained or trapped there. The abnormality was not enough to interfere with the proper operation of her spell but it was nevertheless another mystery centered on the young Harry Potter.

Noting the anomaly for later investigation, the first poisoner sustained the magic until the child's injuries were fully healed before dressing him in one of the towelled dressing gowns provided by the hotel. She carried him to one of the bedrooms and laid him down upon the bed before setting a spell to warn her of his waking and leaving to begin the preparations necessary for the coming years.

A place and materials for her Hanging Gardens of Babylon had to be secured, as well as the summoning of her familiars to scout out the location. Proper clothes had to be acquired for the child and some others for herself, although she could give a request to one of the butlers for that particular errand. On top of that, protections ought to be erected over her temporary residence and information had to be gathered before any moves could be made on the true powers of the world, the corporations whose leadership she desired. And further than that, the 'Diagon Alley' mentioned in the letter should be investigated, although she would likely put that off until it had been scouted by her beloved dove familiars.

The ancient queen chuckled to herself. The work of a tyrant was never done, it seemed.

* * *

As Harry blearily clawed his way to wakefulness, everything seemed disjointed and strange. The last thing he remembered was the yellow-eyed lady saying that she would protect him and then he'd just felt so sleepy. Even weirder was that he didn't hurt at all. He'd not been un-bruised for _ages_.

Then he opened his eyes and took in the room he found himself in.

Above his head, light issued from a crystal-encrusted globe and diffused through a hundred glass raindrops to illuminate the wood-panelled walls. The bed itself seemed big enough to get lost in, especially to one who spent his nights in a claustrophobic cupboard. Golden flowers glinted from their stone-filled vase on the bedside table while tasteful abstract artworks splashed between a pair of white-blinded windows. It was everything that the Dursleys' house had not been.

What truly commanded Harry's attention, though, was the yellow-eyed and pointed-eared figure lounging on the chaise longue beside the bed.

"You're awake, then," she said, setting aside the fluted crystal glass that she had been nursing and straightening up.

"Where am I?" asked the young boy, a little overwhelmed by his surroundings and the niggling doubt in the back of his mind that this had to be a dream.

"Is that how you address a queen, young one?"

"Well I-"

"No matter. It can be excused, for now, given your situation. I am known as Semiramis, the Wise Queen of Assyria, daughter of the goddess Derketo, who is also Atargatis and widow of the king Ninus. You may call me by Semiramis, mother or _agarinnu*_ , for I have determined to make you my son."

All thought of location came to a screeching halt with those last words. Someone wanted him? And she said she was a _queen!_ The only queen he'd ever seen was the lady with the grey hair on the Dursleys' TV. The woman on the chaise longue looked nothing like how he imagined a queen, but she did have a certain… feeling about her even when she was half-lounging. An air of authority, as if she simply expected her commands to be obeyed unquestioningly. He somehow doubted that she was often disappointed.

"Shall I take your silence as acceptance?"

The honeyed voice interrupted Harry's frantic thoughts, drawing him back to reality.

"Do you promise that I don't have to go back?" asked the child timidly, his eyes focused on the cream-coloured sheets covering his legs.

"Upon the art of my magecraft, I shall make such a vow."

Still caught up in the unreality of the situation, Harry nodded as if in a daze. Then one of the words that the woman had used properly registered.

"Magecraft? Is that like magic?"

She smiled radiantly.

"In a way. Do you desire to see for yourself?"

This time, Harry's nods were anything but dazed.

* * *

*Mother

 **A/N:** Because people have been asking me, I do have Harry's Origin and Elemental Alignment planned out. For those who don't want to know, what is below is a **SPOILER**.

Ok, if you read beyond this point, you have no right to criticise me on my spoilers. You have been warned.

Harry is one of those weird people who has a double Origin, although his second Origin is a result of the incident with Voldemort. His Origins are Crucible (being the process of the purging of impurity through hardship) and [Death]. [Death] was the original one, being a large part of what designates him as the Master of Death, but was warped by the introduction of the Killing Curse. The two like-natured energies simultaneously repelled and attracted, each paradoxically overcoming the other. As a 'hard resolution' to the violent paradox within him, Harry's soul was warped to produce a 'container' to suppress them, the Origin of Crucible.

Harry's Elemental Alignment is similarly split and irregular and consists of Miracle and Singularity. The first is an attribute shared by all wizards and is what allows them to make wizardry work. The second is unique to Harry, in much the same way as Sakura's Imaginary Numbers alignment. Singularity revolves around forces of attraction and repulsion, bending things around oneself and making one a lynchpin for processes. In canon, Harry manifests this alignment in his aptitude for summoning and banishing spells, as well as the way that the entire story 'bends' around him. In this fanfiction, his magecraft will largely focus around his Alignment. Offensively, he's going to be doing stuff like manipulating gravity and magnetism, while more passively he's going to be skilled in redirecting attention away from him, as well as making people either be drawn to him or avoid him.

Lastly, Harry's not getting a Reality Marble. He's not that distorted.

Does this sound interesting? Please give me some feedback.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N:** I'm back again, sorry for the wait, and with the answers to questions asked of me. *shuffles papers* They're at the end, because I personally dislike long Author's Notes at the beginnings of chapters and I'm damned if I'll annoy myself with my own writing.

I do have a question of my own, though. When did the goal of reaching Akasha become a thing for magi? Medea didn't seem to care about it, so I'm presuming it was a post-Age of Gods thing, but I don't know.

 **Disclaimer:** MOON-TYPE or Potter Harry own not do I

XxXxXxXxX

Motherhood was a strange thing, mused Semiramis. It seemed to change one's priorities completely, so much so that when she performed a Structural Grasp Mystery - one of the most basic of her Mysteries and one of the earliest that she had ever learned - on Harry, in order to establish his capability for magecraft, the first thing that she thought upon discovering the distortion of his magic core and circuits was not how it might advance her knowledge of the interactions between the powers of the _agugiltu_ and magcraft, but whether or not it would be harmful to the child.

The aberration in his soul was truly strange, unique as far as the ancient sorceress was aware. She had examined the bodies of both living and deceased _agugiltu_ in the past and they had always been something of a curiosity for her, in much the same way as the ways of a man are a curiosity to a woman. Something to watch and observe, but not something you'd particularly want to _be_. After all, for all that many of their skills were beyond many magi of her time - and further still beyond those of this current age, she suspected - they were just so _wasteful_. So brutish in their arts.

And here her charge, evidently originally one of them, had, by the most outrageous of fortune, managed to survive the partial unravelling of the magic circuits that made up the core which gave them their power. Ordinarily this resulted either in death or a permanent coma, but somehow the child had managed to come out of the ordeal not only retaining the capability to use the magic of the _agugiltu_ but also the ability to make use of magecraft.

Of course, if he hadn't she would have made use of the amplifying powers of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon to give him that ability, when they were prepared at least, but that was beside the point.

It was almost as an afterthought that she discovered the answer to a question that had been bothering her since she had first seen Harry without his clothes, namely that of where his Command Seals were. It turned out that a minor, easily-pierced illusion was covering the triangular symbol on the back of his left hand. Given what she knew of young _agugiltu_ and the Dursley's attitude towards those things they thought of as 'freakish', it was a plausible explanation that, when the seals had appeared, the child had instinctively hid them with his wizardry.

"Did I do something wrong?"

The timid voice of the subject of her thoughts interrupted Semiramis' musings.

"Of course not, _atmu_ , I was simply considering the results that I gathered."

"Was that magic? It felt all funny." and then, much quieter, "Can I learn it?"

Semiramis considered Harry's innocent request. Certainly she intended to teach him the intricacies of magecraft so that he could defend himself when, inevitably, magi with more interest in advancing their knowledge than morals discovered his abnormalities but was it too early to begin such? For the moment, at least, they were anonymous by virtue of her concealing Bounded Fields, but that would not last forever. The construction of her principal Noble Phantasm, a step necessary for security against entities of power such as the other Servants that would eventually be summoned, would undoubtedly draw attention no matter how many barriers and veils she concealed it behind. To be a magus was to walk with Death, as she knew all too well.

In the end it was the sight of her adopted son's open curiosity and untainted wonder at the least of her spells that made up her mind.

"The arts of magecraft are passed down in the lines of blood and family-"

"You won't then?"

Harry looked utterly defeated but even as the Servant watched, a horribly practiced look of unhappy acceptance crept across his visage. He lowered his eyes to the cream-carpeted floor. Knowing that this needed to be nipped in the bud before the child's insecurity became even more deep-seated than it already was, the ancient queen knelt down and cupped his chin in her hands, drawing his eyes up to meet her own.

"What makes you think that? You are my son, in mind now but in blood soon. Any who claim otherwise shall reckon with me, for let it be known that I, Semiramis of Assyria, claims Harry Potter as my son for all time. By my divine blood, let it be so, and known."

The unhappiness did not vanish all at once, but he appeared at least a little more hopeful.

"Let us begin, then, once we have both a glass. It does not do to talk of weighty things with nothing to wet the throat."

A minute and two butler-fetched glasses later, one of wine and one of orange juice, the ancient magus began her first lesson with her son. She took a delicate sip of the crimson liquid and reclined upon her chaise longue.

"The first thing which you must understand is that what I performed on you is not 'magic'. True Magic is the creation of miracles, impossibilities otherwise, while magecraft, my art, is the use of magical energy to alter the world in ways which are replicable by effort and mundane knowledge, given sufficient resources and time."

XxXxXxXxX

Semiramis was apprehensive of her current mission. For all that she was hidden from mortal perception by her Presence Concealment Skill and her destination of 'Diagon Alley' had been confirmed and scouted by her dove familiars, the fact remained that the _agugiltu_ were, as ever, an unknown quantity, something that was always a hindrance to plans of any kind. A deeper investigation of their domain was necessary, as was her personal involvement, as none of the contacts and hypnotised puppets she had made in the mundane world would be able to enter and she currently lacked any means of recruiting _agugiltu_ to serve her. That was the main purpose of this visit, acquiring general information that could be used to plan her next move.

The knowledge of only that which could be gained from observation and deduction - that their magic seemed to be reliant upon specific tools, the basic rudiments of the currency, that for some godsforsaken reason they trusted another species with their money and similar facts - was no stable foundation upon which to plan.

The entrance to her target was a traditional-looking British pub named the Leaky Cauldron. Its construction was stocky and solid, oak beams supporting walls of stone brick. The exterior bore the London patina of grey stains from years of passing cars. The door was an equally heavy slab of dark wood planks joined by black iron bands and stood open, admitting a steady stream of robed individuals to enter and leave.

Following a maroon-garbed man with a balding head, Semiramis found herself disappointed by the interior. Dirt clustered around the feet of the tables and made sorties out onto the terracotta-tiled floor. Here and there a table was taken by men or women nursing dull metal tankards or chipped cups of tea. Conversation was loud and raucous.

Doing her best to ignore the squalor of the place, Semiramis negotiated her way around the tables, her Presence Concealment guarding her from the eyes of the patrons. Diagon Alley was constant pressure against her mystical senses, the weight of hundreds of years of accumulated enchantments and wizardry guiding her towards the back of the pub and the small alleyway which ended in a rough-laide brick wall.

Internally musing on the perpetual arrogance and inelegance of the magic of the _agugiltu_ \- wizards as they called themselves nowadays - the raven-haired sorceress channeled a minor amount of prana to fer fingertips and touched the brick marked by the telltale signs of repeated exposure to prana.

The bricks of the wall shook a little and then folded in on themselves, revealing a rough archway leading into a chaotic morass of people of all ages, hatted and bare-headed, robed and suited, old and young, milling around a stone-cobbled road lined on both sides with shops such as Flourish and Blotts, Ollivander's and Quality Quidditch Supplies. At the far end of the alley, a tall building of white marble lorded itself over the rest, gold-inlaid letters half as tall as a man declared it to be

 **Gringotts**

 **Bank of Wizarding Britain est. 1474**

and, more importantly, the location where the mundane currency which she had brought with her could be converted to wizarding money. In addition, the Dumbledore's letter had mentioned that her ward had a vault there, something which merited further investigation.

Dropping her Presence Concealment while the denizens of the alley were distracted by a particularly raucous red-headed family, Semiramis strode towards the marbled building. As she passed though the pair of golden slabs that passed for doors, the ancient queen noticed the delicate lattice of magic settling upon her. It was a relatively weak spell, of the kind that encouraged one to not think about a particular sort of action - stealing, in this case, if her instinctive analysis was correct - and was likely a part of the bank's theft-prevention system. An admirably-crafted solution, especially when the presence of obviously heavily-armed goblin guards further discouraged would-be thieves.

Letting the spell wash off her with the flow of her prana, the regal Servant cut a swathe through the milling customers of the bank as she made for an unoccupied Teller. The short creature looked up at Semiramis through squinted eyes and a pair of pince-nez spectacles.

"How may I aid you this morning?" sneered the goblin, its white, pointed teeth flashing with the clipped words.

"My order of business today is twofold. Firstly, I would like to inquire as to the possibility of opening an account here and, if possible, connecting it to a mundane account."

The goblin's teeth flashed again, this time in a contortion of the face that might have been a feral grin or a baring of the teeth.

"Such a thing is possible, for a fee of course. What is your second order of business?"

"My ward was born to a wizarding family. I would like to know of any holdings or vaults that might be held in trust for him or were inherited from family, as I know that his parents, at least, are deceased."

"And what might be the name of this ward of yours" asked the goblin, eyebrow raised.

"Harry Potter."

The stunted creature's face froze for a moment, before contorting again in a wheezing laugh, bared teeth flashing like pearls.

"And I suppose you're Dumbledore, are you?"

"Excuse me?"

"You think you're the first one to have a go at the Potters' vaults? Well, let's get this over with so I can have you thrown out. Follow me."

The goblin hopped down off his stool, disappearing briefly behind his desk before reappearing again and striding across the patterned floor towards a doorway leading from the room. The resurrected queen followed, stifling her anger at the slight done her with the vindictive pleasure of the knowledge that the diminutive creature would be the made the fool of once her veracity was confirmed.

The doorway led from the hall into a marble-lined corridor which wound past a series of closed doors. Eventually, the goblin rapped on one of the portals - a honey-coloured wooden thing with a brass plaque reading 'Department of Succession' in gothic capitals below a series of glyphs which owed more to claw-scratches than neat pen-marks. The teller called out in a guttural language and opened the door, revealing a desk of red wood with a velvet cover. Another goblin bent over a yellowed parchment, likely taken from the empty scroll-tube next to it, which matched the multitudes of similar tubes which loomed behind him, stacked row upon row, stretching up and out of sight towards the darkened ceiling on groaning shelves.

The teller muttered something to the other goblin, among which 'Harry Potter' could be made out, who returned a knowing look and a long-suffering sigh. The seated creature stowed his parchment in the tube, capped it and turned to Semiramis, pulling a quill pen and a clean sheet towards him.

"Very well then. My name is Keeneye. And yours, for the record?"

"Semiramis"

He noted it down on the parchment.

"What is your relation to the Potter heir?"

"Adopted mother."

"No blood relation then. In that case, a geas contract should suffice." He rummaged in one of the drawers beneath his desk and pulled out another sheet, this one marked on the back by a complex magic circle. A few moments passed, punctuated by the _scritch-scratch_ of the goblin's quill. Finally, he passed the parchment and an inked quill to the ancient sorceress. "Sign your name on the line." he said, a gloating glint in his beady eyes.

She took a moment to read through what the banker had written.

 _I hereby vow that I am the guardian of Harry Potter, within the law and with the will of both myself and the aforementioned ward._

 _Should I deceive in this, I agree to the consequences of this geas, including and limited to:_

 _Forfeiture of all holdings, monetary resources and possessions to Gringotts Bank_

 _Indentured servitude to Gringotts Bank for the period of 10 human years (3653 days)_

 _Ita ut sit**_

Keeping her eyes on the goblin's, not wanting to miss his expression, she signed her name, albeit not as elegantly as she would have liked, given that she was more used to the angular sticks used to inscribe cuneiform than pens and more used to pens than quills.

She silently exalted in the creature's quickly-schooled look of shock, before she laid the parchment to the side and knitted her hands on the desk in front of him, allowing a fraction of her divine heritage to shine in her eyes.

"Now, may I see the holdings of my ward?"

The goblin hurriedly turned to obey.

XxXxXxXxX

* affectionate term for a young child. The literal meaning is something like 'chick' or 'pup'.

** latin for 'may it be so'.

 **A/N:** To those whom it may concern (*cough*49561zombies*cough*), I have been asked how I'm going to balance Semiramis against the other Servants of the Grail War.

Short answer: I'm not, entirely.

Long answer: Yes, Semiramis has access to an EX-class Anti-World Noble Phantasm. However, she only gains its benefits while she remains on it, and she doesn't have a whole team of Servants which she can back up, like in Fate/Apocrypha. While she's not on the Gardens, she's comparatively weak, little stronger than a human, albeit prodigal, magus. She could blast the city of Fuyuki off the map and thereby wipe out the opposition, but that would bring the Mage's Association and, more importantly, Zelretch and Lorelei down on her head, if not the Counter Guardians. Another big problem with regards to using the Gardens against Servants and their Noble Phantasms is that although Semiramis' magic is empowered by the Gardens, it still lacks the mythic weight - the Authority - that true Noble Phantasms possess, meaning that her magic requires more power to achieve the same result, at least against Servants.

As for Harry's magic, I may have been misleading in how I phrased things before. He can use both wizardry and magecraft, although he is no superman in either, and he can use standard magecraft, as his 'Miracle' alignment/Sorcery Trait is essentially 'neutral' with regards to the elements. He can use any magecraft he likes, not unlike an Average One, although it won't be as easy for him as it might be for a real Average One. For more information on this, I have a pre-prepared explanation if people are interested which I can send via PM.

Lastly, no, Semiramis cannot astralise, as a result of her *ahem* unconventional summoning.

And yes, Harry's Command Seal is the sign of the Hallows.

Before I go, if people could give me some ideas for close-quarters weapons for Harry when he gets older via review or PM, that would be delightful. Not Noble Phantasms, but Mystic Codes definitely.


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N:** Hi, I'm back again. Sorry for the wait and thank you all so much for all the suggestions for Harry's Mystic Code. They helped so much and I hope you're happy with what I came up with, when it turns up in a few chapters. This chapter has a lot of time skipping, I'm afraid, but there are some important things which happen.

 **Disclaimer:** I do not own TYPE-MOON or Harry Potter.

* * *

In the taxi on the way back to the Hotel Corinthia, Semiramis examined the files that the goblins had provided on Harry's holdings with the bank. They were quite expensive, a near-folder's worth, and they corroborated what the bankers had told her. Her adopted son, whom she had found being tormented by commoners, was heir apparent to one prominent Wizarding family and heir presumptive to another. Truly, he was nearly a prince himself, for all that both of the families were near-extinct and one was in disgrace. And on top of that, he was a celebrity, hailed for the defeat of the 'Dark Lord Voldemort', although it had taken a great deal of trawling through recent history books to obtain more than He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.

It was an act of extraordinary providence, as the wealth she had access to as guardian of the heir of the Black and Potter lines, as well as the various businesses which they held shares in, would be more than adequate to begin building contacts in the British wizarding world.

It had taken becoming Harry's magical guardian in addition to his guardian in the mundane world (a position secured by virtue of copious amounts of paperwork submitted to London's adoption agency, exploitation of her constructed background and some hypnosis on the Dursleys to make them sign him away and on the social workers at the adoption agency to significantly speed the adoption process) but far better her than the same Albus Dumbledore who had abandoned the child to the tender mercies of the Dursleys.

The goblins themselves had been more than happy to secure the guardianship for her, as having the wealth of two major families back in circulation would be beneficial to the bank. For all that they were greedy fiends, they were nothing if not efficient when they wanted to be. At her request they had swiftly arranged a link between her Santander account and the liquid vault of the Potters.

A visit to the Potters' artefact vault had been both incredible and frustrating, as the position of Family Regent that she held would not allow her to remove any of the heirlooms from the vault unless an adult member of the family accompanied her. Irritating, considering that it would be another twelve years before anything could be withdrawn from that vault, but not an entirely insurmountable problem. It would be easy enough to return at a later date with the proper equipment to copy the books and analyse the Mystic Codes contained within. She might have simply taken a few of the artefacts, were it not for the powerful magics she could feel thrumming maliciously within the stone walls of the vault, coiled like serpents waiting to strike out at intruders and thieves.

Following the unexpectedly productive visit to the bank, a further hour had been spent browsing the wares of Diagon Alley. It was almost unbelievable to the Servant how little value these wizards placed on their magic. They sold Mystic Codes by the hundreds, kept books of magical theory and even ready-constructed spells openly available in shops, sold the parts of Monstrous and Phantasmal Beasts - albeit minor ones - by the jarful and even used spells for things as trivial as making their shop displays flash different colours.

To be sure, they had some ingenious inventions - a personal favourite of hers was the space-expanded and feather-light bag she used for the carrying of the numerous books and artefacts which she had purchased - but they seemed to care so little for it all. There was none of the mysticism of magecraft, or even the magic of the _agugiltu_ of her time. It was all so... _vulgar._ Mundane. She almost pitied them, to be so focused on the physical that they could make the ability to warp reality itself a mere fact of life, rather than a thing of wonder.

The taxi finally pulled up infront of the hotel, the engine sputtering quietly to rest. Replacing the documents in their folder and stowing the folder in her bag, the ancient queen handed the cabbie his payment and left the vehicle. She made her way up the pale marble steps of the hotel and flashed her hotel card to the receptionist before stepping into one of the five lifts set into the patterned walls and keying pressing the little button which corresponded to the Royal Suite, where she and her adopted son had been staying.

As the doors of the lift _dinged_ open, though, the yellow-eyed sorceress' guard was raised. There were voices sounding in the rooms. One was the clear, high and joyful tones that she had managed to tease out of Harry only a few times, while the the other was entirely unfamiliar. It was the voice of an old man, worn with care.

Semiramis opened the door in the back of her mind, the one behind which the sounds-beyond-sound that were the Divine Words were kept. She recalled the Word that was **Sight**. She opened her mouth and soul and spoke it to the world, along with **Unseen** , bolstering the power of her Presence Concealment. The power of the Word rippled out, peeling away the walls. She saw her son in the lounge, she saw the old, grey-haired and bearded man sitting heavily in one of the leather armchairs and she saw the many-hued window opened in the air, through which some distant landscape could be seen.

There was an unknown magus with her son, the same son whose magic circuits and core would be invaluable to any magus' research.

Cursing herself for relying on her concealing Bounded Fields and being lax in her actual defenses, the queen prepared the Words of **Immobility** , **Powerlessness** and **Pain**. She would discover the chink in her defenses that this intruder must have exploited and make certain that her next residence had no such vulnerabilities. The Gardens would have to be constructed as soon as possible.

As she rounded the corner into the lounge unleashed the first Word, that if **Immobility**. As its attendant magic circle bloomed into existence beneath the man's armchair, though, a wash of prismatic colour erupted atop it and when it had subsided, the magic had vanished.

The man turned towards her, her attack having shattered the protection of the Presence Concealment.

"Peace, O queen of Assyria. I mean no harm. Why don't you join Harry and I? Can you believe he's never seen the sea? All children should go to the beach at least once, don't you agree?"

The scene was so utterly incongruous, a magus - a sorcerer, even, if her suspicions were correct - with power sufficient to wipe away magic from the Age of the Gods speaking like an old grandfather come over to visit, that Semiramis found herself with nothing to say. The man's face hardened.

"Why don't you go and have a look at that Blue Planet episode we saw on the TV guide earlier, Harry?"

There was magic in his words and, just as she had been able to overcome her son's innate resistance to magic with her hypnotism more than a week ago, Harry wavered for a moment before shaking himself like a wet dog and wandering, somewhat robotically, from the room.

"Children shouldn't have to hear what I'm about to tell you."

Drawing herself up, the ancient queen looked down into the seated man's crimson eyes.

"Why have you come?" she asked, speaking the the asme voice she once used when addressing her subjects in her long-vanished throne room.

"I'm here to give you a warning. Not a threat and not an ultimatum. An honest warning."

"Deliver it, then."

"Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Kischur Zelretch Schweinorg, Sorcerer of the Second Magic and Wizard Marshal of the Clock Tower. It's in neither capacity that I've come today. I've come as a witness to the creation of the Heaven's Feel Ritual and the construction of the Holy Grail.

"I helped make that artefact for the sake of _wishes_ , for the sake of, maybe, materialising a wonder in this darkening world of ours. And so, when I saw a young boy desperately in need of such a miracle, I gave him a way that he might fulfill it."

 _It was him_ , realised Semiramis, _He was the one who left a book inscribed with the formula for the summoning of a Servant on the other side of the world from the Grail._

"However, I didn't give Harry that book, only for you and he to be taken by the magi of the Clock Tower and strapped to a dissection table. I thought that you'd have left London by now, so I thought I'd drop in and give you a heads-up, along with a hand."

He reached into one of the pockets of his voluminous jacket. Semiramis tensed, readying a Word, before she saw the objects he pulled out. A pair of paper slips, about thrice as long as they were wide and printed with reams of blocky type.

"Two aeroplane tickets from Heathrow to Fuyuki City East, leaving 11:35 next Saturday. That's four days." He levered himself up and held them out to her.

"There's going to be a crate on that plane too. Half a tonne of assorted Iraqi plants, dirt, water, stone and such. Good for a garden, one might say."

"How came you by these secrets of mine?"

"I told you, I helped make the Grail. You think that any magus worth their salt wouldn't add in a thing or two of their own?" A mischievous, lopsided grin split his face from ear to ear. "So, will you take it, or not?"

* * *

The days leading up to their departure from England were busy ones, both in the mundane world and that of the wizards. Accounts were arranged for the sake of worldwide accessibility, incorporating everything from communication mirrors to credit cards. Magical goods ranging from Language Lozenges™ to books of (questionable) spells were packed into bottomless bags. Control over thralls and pawns was reinforced and made more permanent, until Semiramis was satisfied that her nascent network would suffer only minimally from her absence from direct control.

Schemes were laid, both with the goblins and with mundane businesses, for holdings and properties to be purchased in Fuyuki and the surrounding areas. Those would not bear fruit for at least a few months yet, but it was a start.

The flight itself was primarily characterised by Harry's extreme excitement, although he did his best to hide it. Semiramis could see the shine in his eyes as they walked over to the Boeing 777 that would carry them around most of the world.

In truth, Semiramis could understand the child's excitement. For all that she could probably use the power of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon to replicate the feat of such long-distance travel, that the mortals of the present day had done it with no magecraft at all, no bending of the laws of reality, made it an incredible achievement.

The look on Harry's face as the vehicle left the ground and at seeing the English countryside laid out beneath him like a great green tapestry bought a smile to her own. The unrestrained wonder was beautiful while it lasted, more exquisite in her eyes than all the fine silks and jewels she had taken from the citadels and fortresses her armies and venoms had conquered.

The excitement eventually faded, though, defeated by the exhaustion of the hyperactivity that only a five-year old could achieve. He eventually succumbed to sleep somewhere over Russia and snuggled down into his seat, a small, timid smile gracing his lips.

* * *

It was a week after Semiramis and her adopted son had arrived in Fuyuki City. Their first few days had been spent in a luxurious hotel room, awaiting the finalisation of the purchase of the large Western-style house, almost a mansion, that had been bought in Miyama Town, the older and more traditional side of the city. It was on the borders of the forest near the foot of Mount Miyama. Harry had been delighted by the fact that it was barely a five minute walk from the house to the sea. The first day they had moved in, it had taken the promise of his favourite dinner cooked by one of the servants that the ancient queen had preemptively hired.

Shinto, the newer half of the metropolis, was still in something of a shambles. The official reports were that there had been some kind of chemical accident, a spill of volatile chemicals which had ignited and poured through a large section of the city. It was a lie, though. Semiramis' doves could feel the malice that even now, months later, was soaked into the ground there, far more than even the despair and torment of the 500 people who had died in the fire could account for. No, the cause of the Fuyuki Fire was of magical origin and, given its location and timing, was almost certainly connected to the Holy Grail War.

On the other hand, though, the way that the mana of the city still writhed invisibly was a boon to the Servant, as it would make it harder for the magi of the area to detect the construction of her principle Noble Phantasm. Of course, that alone would be nowhere near enough to entirely conceal it, but combined with the powerful Bounded Fields which she had erected and the , she hoped that her activities would remain unnoticed for the time it took for the Gardens' ritual to become self-sustaining.

The crate of necessary materials for the construction of the Gardens had already been taken apart and its contents laid out in the courtyard of Ryuudou Temple, beneath which the Greater Grail was hidden. The priests had been hypnotised into ignorance of her presence and Harry had been placed in the care of the head priest, Katashi Ryuudou. He and the priest's younger son, Issei, had already struck up a friendship, despite Harry's younger age. She had summoned what guardian familiars she could, mostly Dragon Tooth Warriors, and had them hide in the forests surrounding the temple, but the protections were far less than what she would have constructed, had she not been in a hurry to bring her greatest asset to the battlefield.

Within Semiramis' mind, venom fell into a cup and the floodgates of her magic circuits opened beneath a deluge of prana. She spoke, with lips and soul:

"Hanging Gardens of Babylon."

The prana rushed from her into the stones and plants laid on the grass before her. Golden lines stretched from one to the other, the beginning of the arcane matrix that, when completed, would allow her to work magecraft that reached the realms of True Magic. Golden energy burst from the earth in sinuous strands and twisted into a throne. The queen settled herself upon it and began the chant that would continue the construction of the Gardens

"O babbanû kirimaḫḫu, eṭēlu, eṭēlu to ašratu."*

Pale stone faded into existence as pillars around her and impossible plants draped themselves in artful traceries. Her throne rose from the ground on golden legs as gravity wavered for a moment before lifting the heart of her domain into the air.

"O babbanû kirimaḫḫu, eṭēlu, eṭēlu utāru banûtu Ishtar."**

Her garden grew strong.

* * *

*Oh beautiful garden, grow, grow to reach the heavens.

**Oh beautiful garden, grow, grow to exceed the beauty of Ishtar. (the Assyrian goddess of fertility, warfare and love)

 **A/N:** OK, Divine Words have happened and as they're only explained a little on the TYPE-MOON wiki, here's some information on them. In essence, Divine Words are 'orders to the world' which modern magi lack the capability to pronounce. In my world, this is due to the fact that the Divine Words are not solely physical, requiring structures which are to the vocal chords as Magic Circuits are to the nerves. This 'Divine Voice' vibrates the mana in the atmosphere around the speaker into carrying out their will, in accordance with the Word that is spoken. However, there is a price to the use of Divine Words. Overuse of the Divine Voice inflicts damage upon it, as well as the throat and vocal cords, resulting in muteness, large-scale and irreparable damage to the esophagus and trachea and eventually the wholesale loss of the Divine Voice. Furthermore, the damage to the trachea can cause it to swell and block off airflow, suffocating the magus.

Also, Zelretch! I hope you liked him. I don't intend for him to turn up constantly, but he'll drop in every now and then like the troll he is, so anticipate more of the wonderfulness that it Kischur Zelretch Schweinorg, probably when you least expect it. On another note, I finally understand why so many people write so much about Zelretch. He just so _fun_ to write.

Lastly, I am looking for a beta reader. If anyone is interested, please send me a PM. If you do, I'll be eternally grateful.


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N:** Back again and, if you'll excuse me my semi-delirious celebration:

More than 10,000 views on this story and over 200 favourites and follows! I'm so _happy_!

Ahem.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the chapter as much as you seemed to the last one. I must warn you, though, that all Japanese places, names and things which you don't recognise from Fate/Stay Night in this chapter are drawn from Google Translate and my own meager understanding of Japanese. Expect errors. Many errors.

Also, I've reduced the rating from M to T, as I don't think that the stuff I've done so far is all that bad. It might go up again later, but that remains to be seen.

 **Disclaimer:** I do not own TYPE-MOON or Harry Potter.

* * *

When Harry first saw the Gardens, he thought that he was dreaming.

That wasn't a new feeling for him. Ever since his mother had taken him away from the Dursleys', he'd always been a bit worried about going to sleep, fearing that if he slept he might wake up and find out that it had all been a dream. This was something on a whole other level, though.

The hotel suite thay'd stayed in in London had been massive - bigger than the Dursleys' whole house, in fact - and the house that they were living in here was massive as well, but a giant floating palace overgrown with trailing flowers and fruit-bearing vines was an entirely new level of fantastic. The air was still warm despite the height of the Gardens and small birds flitted from blossom to blossom, occasionally calling out to one another in melodious tones.

And yet there he stood, the freak-boy from No 4 Privet Drive, walking on marble and gold and hand-in-hand with a queen who wanted to make him an actual part of her family, as if he was her real son.

The thought was incredible, and it made Harry want to pinch himself, just to make _absolutely_ sure that he wasn't just dreaming it up.

The pale, vine-traced columns of the avenue through which they walked opened up into a small courtyard, the roof open to the sky. There were no clouds. They clustered close around the edges of the Gardens, leaving the sky bare and clear, letting the light of the morning sun stream down onto the ankle-deep reflecting pool that dominated the centre of the space. Rising from the pool was a stone pedestal, about the height of Harry's chest, upon which rested a golden bowl.

Releasing his hand, his Semiramis turned to the child, her black dress whispering softly against the floor.

"This is where the ritual shall be performed. I shall be controlling the magic, you need only follow my instructions. Do you understand?"

Harry nodded.

"In that case, first things first. Remove your shoes."

Harry bent over and pulled off the velcro straps of his new trainers, bought in London a little over a week ago now. The sorceress' own shoes dissolved into motes of pale blue light and she stepped into the pool, motioning for Harry to follow.

Semiramis directed him to stand next to the pedestal, opposite her.

"Hold your hand over the bowl." she said, holding her own palm-up in demonstration.

In her other hand, she produced a short, leaf-bladed knife. Swaying slightly, she held the blade flat over the basin. Her gaze rose to the heavens.

"O babbanû aštaru, karābu nāši."*

The copper-electric taste which Harry had begun to associate with Semiramis' magic appeared, and he felt an immaterial wind against his skin, even though his clothes. Goosebumps raced down his arms.

Meeting the child's eyes with her own again, she spoke.

"Do you wish to be my son?"

Throat tight with emotion, Harry answered croakily.

"Yes"

"Will you take upon you a name which befits a son of Semiramis, queen of Assyria?"

"I will,", Harry answered, more firmly this time.

"And will you learn the arts of my magecraft, taking upon yourself all the burdens that that entails?"

Strongly now, "I will."

"Kīam , kīa"**

So saying, the ancient queen slashed the knife quickly across their palms and clasped them together firmly, allowing a steady drip of mingled blood to fall into the golden basin. There was no pain to the cut, only an odd sensation of _tugging_ as the knife slid across, and then numbness.

"I, Semiramis of Akkad, daughter of Derketo, widow of Nimrod and Onnes, claim Harry potter as my son for all time and declare that he shall share in my blood, my arts and my power and that his name from this day forth shall be Asharu, the Wind of Morning."

The blood in the bowl boiled and seethed, glowing an angry crimson, with flecks of golden light shining in its depths. Harry felt a strange sensations weep through his body, like the tingle when he quickly went from cold to hot. His eyes, ears and throat stung and itched, wetness tracing down his cheeks. The taint of copper on his tongue rose until it was all he could taste, although he couldn't tell if that was from the magic in the air or his lip where he had bitten it.

An immense, hot pressure seemed to press in on the child, as if a great weight was settled on his chest, constricting his lungs and cutting off his breath. It grew and grew, almost crushing him, although there was no physical pressure. Just at the moment that the weight became overwhelming, something gave and whatever it was rushed into him like a fiery wind, setting his insides alight with an ecstatic heat. His muscles sang and his heart beat with redoubled vigour. Even the air in his lungs seemed sweeter.

There was a moment of calm.

Then Harry's forehead erupted in searing pain and he was conscious only of a high-pitched, grating scream before blackness claimed his vision and he knew no more.

* * *

In an office in the central tower of an ancient castle on the outskirts of the Scottish highlands, a delicate silver instrument spun wildly for a moment or two, its wire orreries rotating madly around the tiny red gem at its heart.

It wavered crazily on the edge of the shelf where it was perched before its newfound momentum toppled it from its place and its intricate matrices of wire bent themselves out of shape beating at the stone floor. It looked like nothing so much as a dying bird desperately trying to fly again, before the life finally left it.

When the office's owner returned later that night from his meeting, he picked up the pieces of the apparatus and tried to repair them, but no matter how he positioned the orreries and set them aglow with sparks of magic, they simply spun for a moment, seeking their target, before lapsing into stillness and inactivity once again.

By 1 o'clock in the morning, the man had abandoned his project. It must simply be a fluctuation in the ley lines beneath the castle, he rationalised. Within a few days the magical environment would be back to normal and then he'd try again.

No matter how he tried, though, his efforts would be in vain.

* * *

When Harry awoke again, it was to the sound of birdsong and the sensation of a warm, gentle wind on his skin. It was a slow, lazy awakening, his eyes unwilling to open and his body satisfied to lie still, luxuriating in the slow pulse of warmth beneath his skin. The last memories replayed themselves behind Harry's - no, Asharu's - eyelids and he finally opened his eyes, daring his senses to reveal their deception and for the rough, wooden ceiling of his cupboard to stretch above his head.

He lay upon one of the white-sheeted beds of the Hanging Gardens, beneath a star-strewn sky. The moon stared whitely down, turning the sheets to silver and bleaching the golden traceries of the walls. A dove perched on one of the branching struts which extended out into the opening of the ceiling, cooing softly. Sitting up, the young wizard had to brush the hair from his eyes. It had grown and, by the feel of it, reached almost to his shoulders. However, as he was moving the hair away from his eyes, he realised something.

He wasn't wearing glasses, but his vision was as clear as it had ever been. Clearer, in fact. He had always had trouble seeing things far away, even with the frameless glasses that Semiramis had bought him, but now everything was clearly outlined and defined. It was almost disorienting, but it did nothing to stop Asharu from tearing off the covers - he absently noted that he was wearing only his underwear - and running outside to the reflecting pool.

The silver-sheen of the moon was bright as it played across the pool and, there in the water, was his reflection.

It was transformed.

His hair hung in sheets around his visage, chin-length at the front and lengthening to almost reach his shoulderblades further back. Pointed ears peaked out from beneath it, although they did not have the length of his mother's. The planes of his face were a little narrower, a little sharper, although they were more aristocratically handsome than feminine. His eyes, while still a piercing green, were slitted like a cat's and seemed to have a faint radiance to them that had not been there previously. His teeth were white pearls in his mouth when he opened it in surprise, and the canines were sharp than they had been before, lending a slightly feral cast to his face, along with the exotic, catlike slant of his eyes.

The rest of his body had changed as well. He had always been shorter and smaller than Dudley, which the boy had used to his advantage, but now he thought that he would be the taller by at least an inch or two. The twinge in his left wrist from when it had been crushed in the door a few months back had vanished as well.

There was a soft fluttering sound behind him. Turning, the young wizard saw Semiramis standing there, a gentle smile on her face. A dove sat on the wall behind her.

"You take after me, _Atmu,_ " she said softly, stepping forwards and kneeling down to his level.

The love and devotion in those words brought tears to Asharu's eyes and he rushed forwards into her arms. She wrapped her arms around him in turn, drawing him into her as he wept silent tears of happiness.

Here, amid the clouds and golden gardens, he was home.

* * *

In the days following Asharu's adoption, time seemed to run at a frantic pace. Contact was made with the Japanese wizarding world, which could not be more different than the British one. Unlike their European counterparts, the wizards of Japan were almost an open secret. They had their own department within the government and, although they were ultimately under the authority of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet, they largely governed themselves. That was where the similarities ended, though.

Where the British Ministry of Magic was almost an entirely separate entity to the central government, the Japanese Department of Arcane Affairs was firmly a part of the administration. They had their own branches of the legislative, judicial and executive subsets of the government, but they were not so completely severed. Magical crimes were judged by a jury of both wizards and non-wizards, allowing a balance of opinion.

The root of this peaceful coexistence was an old custom, namely that although the existence of magic was comparatively common knowledge, discussing it openly and casually was viewed as rude and offensive, unless you yourself were a wizard or talking to one for the purpose of asking their services. Thus, the magical and mundane factions of Japan intermingled peacefully, as they had for centuries, and it was not at all uncommon for non-magical people to hang protective _ofuda_ on their houses and businesses in order to keep out evil magic and malicious creatures. The cohabitation was also aided by the fact that, in general, Japanese wizardry tended towards more subtle expressions than the bold and overt magic that was primarily performed through the medium of wands, meaning that foreigners tended to dismiss the charms and talismans as little more than superstition.

Asharu and Semiramis spent a day exploring the wizarding district on the island of Kozushima, to the south of Tokyo. The small town of Kyōi no Mura, hidden beneath polite illusions and entered by means of the Awanomikoto Shrine, was abustle with men, women and stranger creatures going about their business. Fox-eared men traded charms with women in traditional kimonos and drank sake together at veiled booths. Stores sold manga whose pages were alive with epic battles between arch-nemeses, trading silent sword-strikes to the accompaniment of gasping children.

A visit was paid to the Gringotts there, this time constructed in the fashion of a tall white-jade pagoda, both to make sure that funds could be accessed if necessary and to make sure that Asharu's new new identity and blood was registered with the bank, as it was with the government. The business was quick, albeit laden with form upon form, and was concluded long before it was time to return to Fuyuki. The remaining hours were spent browsing the many shops and stalls of

Following the visit to the wizarding district, the days began to melt together, soon becoming weeks and months. Tutors were hired for Asharu to learn of the mundane world and lessons were held in their house in the shadow of Ryuudou Temple. He learned basic maths, English, Japanese - he had quite a bit of trouble with katakana at first -, art, etiquette, some science and various sports and physical pursuits.

One of the young magus' favourite subjects was aikido, which he was taught by Murakami-sensei, a young woman with unusual blonde hair and a hyperactive attitude which one would think would be more suited to a student than a teacher. Regardless, she was an excellent instructor and Asharu progressed quickly, gaining a green belt within a year. The motions of the style felt natural to him, as well as the way that the very heart of the art was the redirection and utilisation of an opponent's energy and movement.

That same flow and movement was very much evident in his lessons on magecraft with his mother as well. Having the primary alignment of Singularity and the secondary alignments of Water and Miracle - this last being shared by all wizardkind - meant that much of his magic was centred around the redirection and control of flows and attractive and repulsive energies.

At first, he had had a great deal of trouble with the use of magecraft. He could utilise prana within himself - in fact, Semiramis said that he was a near-prodigy with internal magics - but when it came to expelling it and forming spells outside the microcosm of his own body, his circuits just didn't seem to want to comply. Even the simplest of spells, Structural Grasp and Reinforcement, eluded him. His mother was of little help, as her style of teaching was mostly based around giving him the resources and knowledge he needed to solve a problem and then letting him use that to find his own solution. It had troubled him for months by the time he finally realised his problem.

The most basic nature of his magic was 'Singularity', the warping of reality around a point, and he _didn't have a point to work from_.

That realisation in mind, he went to his mother and asked her how he could make a Mystic Code to help him. He knew by her smile that she was proud he had realised on his own.

A week later, with Semiramis' help, he had crafted his first Mystic Code. It was a simple thing, a marble-sized ball of fired clay which had been mixed with a little of his blood and inscribed with minute cuneiform, to shape the magic within. It was little more than a channel for his power, a 'point' from which he could act, but it made the use of his magecraft vastly easier. He had started off with making the little Code - he called it a Qabsu, 'centre' in the Akkadian which he was learning from his mother - move around, first rolling and then levitating. He could make it move quite fast, as well as make it give out a sort of 'field' which could draw things to it or push them away.

He hadn't spent all his time working, though. He was a firm friend of Issei, who lived in the temple, and he had made friends with someone else as well, although that was quite a different story.

 _The snake lay basking in the sun atop one of the smaller pillars of the Hanging Gardens, its scales disguising it against the verdant greenery. It was one of the many venomous creatures that Semiramis had summoned for the purpose of protecting her Gardens and it enjoyed its new life. Food was plentiful in the small birds that flocked to the flowers and fruits, water could be taken from any of the many pools dotted around the Gardens, it was rarely bothered and the sun was warm._

 _It was disguised so well, in fact, that Asharu didn't notice it until he had put his hand on its tail. Then it made itself known, drawing up a third of its four-foot length into the air as it swayed threateningly._

 _§Begone, or this son-of-earth-and-sun will strike you!§_

 _Panicked, the young boy had stumbled back and, although rationally it would do no good, called out._

 _§I'll go! I'll leave you alone.§_

 _The snake's hissing took on a new tone, a curious one. Asharu's mind was catching up with his actions now, bringing with it confusion. The snake had spoken, even though he knew for a fact that it was only a mundane one, not some kind of Phantasmal Beast. And how did he know that it was curious?_

 _§A speaker-to-the-sons-and-daughters-of-earth-and-sun?§_

 _The speech was odd, as although he could understand what was_ meant _, there were no words to go along with it, only a soft hssss-shhhss. Licking his lips nervously, the young wizard picked himself up and, deciding that he might as well try, spoke back to the snake._

 _§My name is Asharu. What is yours?§_

 _To his surprise, the words came out in the same hissing rasp ass the snake's._

 _§A speaker in truth? I am called scent-of-green-vine. Should you desire my wisdom, I shall be here in the warm-sun-place.§_

 _§Do you mind if I call you Seru?*** It's just that it's a bit shorter than what you said.§_

 _§Call me as you will, young-hatchling-speaker. Now, leave. I must warm myself while new-sun lasts.§_

Following that, Asharu often spoke to the green snake while he sunned himself on the pillar. Seru was quite the character, tremendously lazy and arrogant, but possessed of an odd, intuitive intelligence which often offered a useful alternative perspective on his problems. In fact, it was some of the serpent's advice which had lead to his realisation of the nature of his problem with his magecraft. Conversations with Seru were always entertaining, though, as he found the aspects of human life that Asharu told him of utterly perplexing, and he just couldn't seem to get his head around the way that humans seemed to enjoy meat that 'had all the juiciness seared out of it'.

Occupied with friends, studies and his magecraft, the years turned quickly until, altogether too quickly for Semiramis' liking, it was time for her son to become a part of the Japanese wizarding world in truth, going to the afternoon schools which all such students attended, in addition to his mundane studies.

* * *

* Oh beautiful goddess, bless us/this.

**Be it so.

***Snake (not that creative, I know)

 **A/N:** From now on, Harry will be referred to as Asharu, except when people who don't know his new name speak about him (i.e. most of the wizarding world).

For clarification, the 'hot pressure' and the 'flecks of golden light' was the Divinity in Semiramis' blood entering into Harry (he's about ¼ divine by the end of the adoption) and the high-pitched scream was Voldemort's Horcrux being expelled by that Divinity. I can't imagine the blood of the Gods coexisting with something which is repeatedly referred to as an 'abomination'. The apparatus which Dumbledore tried to repair measured the state of the Horcrux and the protections binding it. It went haywire because those protections were overloaded by divine power, a thing beyond human magic.

Note that in this story, I'm treating Divinity as 'a capacity by which one can potentially exceed human limits and attain godhood', not 'bestowal of godhood/posthuman ability'. Also, Harry has a comparatively low Divinity - about D rank - so the effect won't be particularly apparent beyond a natural self-possession, boldness and confidence. High Divinity would lead easily to overweening arrogance, like Gilgamesh. Divinity is by no means the same thing as Authority, the powers of actual Divine Spirits.

I'm not sure if Harry is nearsighted or farsighted in the films, but I'm going to assume that he's nearsighted. Sorry if that offends any die-hard HP fans out there.

Talking of die-hard HP fans, I know that Japan has a wizarding community and so on which is detailed briefly on Pottermore and that their school of magic is Mahoutokoro. For the purpose of this story, pretend that there isn't. It's mostly for the sake of some interactions that I want to have later, some cultural dissonance and the way that I imagine how Japanese magical society would be, given that the country has a strong tradition of magic and never experienced the witch hunts which drove western wizards into hiding. And frankly, the way that Japanese wizarding society is described strikes me as faintly vulgar and incredibly Britain-centred for a country on the other side of the world. I'm afraid you'll have to buckle up and accept that this is fanfiction. Angry reviews on this subject will be filed in the 'to be ignored' folder.

That request for a beta reader is still open, if anyone's interested.


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N:** Back again, and with a friend, this time. The wonderful Omnimessiah is now my beta reader. Praise be to him, and all those who have reviewed, fuelling the furnace of my imagination!

An important note for this chapter: The Japanese school system (and the fiscal year, for that matter) begins in April.

 **Disclaimer:** I do not own Harry Potter or the Nasuverse. Those belong to J.K. Rowling and TYPE-MOON and Kinoko Nasu, respectively.

XxXxXxXxX

It was 3:35 on a clear, cloudless April day when Asharu first went to Kyōi no Mura cram school.

There were other institutions of magical learning throughout the country, of course; ranging from day schools with a mixed magical-mundane curriculum to solely-magical boarding schools, but the cram school situated on the northern side of the major Wizarding district was a popular recourse for children who attended 'ordinary' school.

Given its relatively short hours, the school's curriculum was well-known for being fast-paced and heavily based upon outside research from its students, but it nevertheless claimed a place among the best academies of the country.

It was a strange feeling for the 7 year-old wizard, emerging from the specially-constructed portal which had been installed in their house into the sunlight of the school's courtyard. Children milled around, ranging from his own age to the latter teens. Here and there, a parent stood like an island in the sea of brown and black hair, leaning down and whispering comfort the shy creatures which clung to them, urging them to go and join their new classmates.

The young wizard followed the katakana signs which pointed to Room 21, the homeroom to which he had been assigned by letter.

Passing through the sliding door, Asharu found himself at the front of a roomful of desks, a few occupied by other children. Conscious of their eyes upon him, he raised his head and walked purposefully to one of the desks by the window, settling into a seat and taking out one of the books that his mother had appropriated from the English wizards. The European wizards may have some… interesting policies but their mastery of raw prana and its application to the environment was impressive. The feats detailed in the book - _Principles of Conjuration_ \- were fascinating. A form of magic which, while operating on the same principles as the Projection practiced by magi, was capable of effects almost on the level of Denial of Nothingness, the creation of permanent object when used by a master.

So engrossed in his book was he that he missed the rest of the class arriving, and it was not until the teacher called for attention. Looking up, what he saw confused Asharu.

Sitting in the teacher's chair was a man-sized, humanoid fox, complete with a suit, tie and a name badge. Three tails waved placidly behind him through the hole cut in the seat.

"Good afternoon, class," said the fox, which the young wizard now realised must be a kitsune*, "My name is Akomachi no Sanbi, Akomachi-sensei to you. I'll be your homeroom teacher for your first year here, as well as your tutor in the art of manipulating magic without a focus. Any questions?"

A girl with shoulder-length brown hair in the second row raised a hand.

"Yes?"

She lowered her hand and coughed nervously.

"What kind of magic can you do without a focus? Okaa-san** always uses one of her ofuda to do magic."

The fox-teacher smiled - or at least the young magus thought it was a smile. There was a bearing of pearly white teeth and he didn't look angry. "An excellent question. The simplest answer I can give you is 'not much', at least not until you're determined to master the skill. 'Pure' manipulation, as it's known, is, on its own, a fairly useless skill which only masters can make meaningful use of. What it's mainly used for is in directing magical energy to something which needs it, such as activating ofuda."

The teacher's smile widened further, and he brought a hand up in front of his chest in a curious position, the little and ring fingers curled back towards his palm while the index and middle fingers were pointed straight up. His tails fanned out behind him and, with a soft _whooshing_ sound, blue-green flames ignited at the tips of each.

"Of course, that's not factoring in individual talents that you might have. I'm a kitsune, for example, so I have a natural affinity for fire, making it easy for me to create these kitsunebi***.

"Now, any other questions?"

There were none.

"Alright. In that case, why don't we introduce ourselves to each other and then I'll tell you more about how the lessons are planned to work.

Behind him, the little balls of eldritch fire danced like fireflies.

XxXxXxXxX

It had been a week since Asharu's first day at Kyōi no Mura cram school and he was thoroughly enjoying it.

His previous knowledge of prana and its manipulation helped a great deal with the basics of wizardry, but not so much that he found the classes effortless. It was easy for him to circulate energy within himself, but pushing it out into the practice ofuda so that they lit up as Akomachi-sensei had demonstrated had been a pleasant challenge. The prana which was expelled from his core didn't seem to have quite the same issues as that from his circuits with regards to his Singularity alignment, but it was still sluggish and reluctant to discharge from his body.

The outing the class was on now, though, was the current focus of his thoughts. They had left the school and were walking to the focus-maker's store in the village proper to buy their first magical channel. It would not be the last, of course, as a person's magical self changed over time and, unless made by a master, foci did not, but it was nonetheless a significant event.

The excited voices of the rest of the class sounded around the young wizard as they followed Akomachi-sensei through the streets. He kept up a conversation with the boy who usually sat next to him and who he had struck up a mild friendship with, Terauchi Heiji, talking about what they thought that their foci would end up being. Heiji was hoping that he would be matched with a fan like his father, while Asharu favoured the idea of a ceremonial knife or maybe a ring.

The conversation petered off as they reached the store, a wood-fronted affair with a selection of different artefacts and implements displayed in the window, from bowls to ofuda to even a kimono woven, or so said the card beneath it, with the threads of a Jurogumo spider.

Akomachi-sensei pulled open the door and ushered the dozen children inside.

The room was lined with shelves, upon which sat an eclectic variety of objects, from blocks of wood to feathers to spools of thread. The centre of the room was dominated by a complex arrangement of benches, tools and unidentifiable paraphernalia which nevertheless had the look of being well-used and kept. At a few of the low stools surrounding the benches, men and women - more than former than the latter - sat, crafting various items from the materials on the wall. A short, black-haired man noticed the gaggle of children and came over, carrying a small clipboard which he seemed to have been using to take note of the items on the wall.

"Ah, Akomachi-san. Here for another class?"

"That's right Fukuya-san." He turned to the children. "Alright, if you could follow Fukuya-san here, he'll see what kind of focus would suit you best."

"Come this way, then," said the small man. He walked towards one of the benches in the centre of the room. Upon this one sat a stone bowl, about a foot and a half in diameter. It was filled with a liquid which might have been water, were it not for the faint trails of silvery light that flashed through its depths.

"Now, who wants to go first?"

There was a brief and heated whisper-fight between a number of the children before a boy named Kenji stepped forwards, victorious. Asharu decided to wait and see what happened.

"Alright, now if you could touch the water - just with your fingertips - and channel some magic into it, that would be marvellous."

Kenji did so, his face screwing up in concentration. From his position in the middle of the class, Asharu could just make out that the lights in the water seemed to become stronger and faster, swirling and darting like fish. He could make no sense of it but Fukuya-san evidently could, as he commented "Well, looks like you'll be best suited to a fan, then, probably with kamaitachi claws for the braces. If you could go and talk to Aoi-san over there," he pointed to one of the craftspeople at the benches "And say that you want a fan. Next, please."

There were a few more children before Asharu had his turn. Trailing his hands in the water, which was oddly warm, he closed his eyes and pushed out a fraction of his prana. The silver motes immediately split into two sections, some taking up a central position and spinning in a column while the rest formed a ring around that and circulated slowly.

"That's an interesting result." commented the black-haired man. "Well, it's fairly obvious that you're suited for a ring, but I don't know about materials. Go and speak to Toyama-chan. She does the rings, so she might have a better idea than me."

Making his way over to the young woman who had been indicated, the young wizard opened his mouth to tell her what Fukuya-san had said before she interrupted him.

"Yes, I heard. A ring, unknown materials. Which is your dominant hand?"

Caught off guard by her quick speech, it took a moment for the words to sink in before the young wizard held out his right hand.

What followed was a storm of measurements, calculations scrawled in the air with the tip of a finger and odd, seemingly random questions ranging from whether he preferred hot weather to cool weather to whether he had ever flown in an aeroplane. By the time she had finished her interrogation he was utterly mystified, although he had managed to catch a few mutters of 'maple wood' and some references to various creatures and beasts, foremost among them 'nure-onna' and 'tengu'.

Having had the most suitable components and shapes for their foci chosen and the orders placed, the school party left the focus store, writing down their addresses so that the foci could be delivered once they were made. Apparently using magic in their construction could have detrimental effects on the function of the foci, so they had to be crafted by hand.

The group trailed through the town, illuminated by the lights of store displays and the occasional early-lit lantern. The crowds were far sparser than they had been earlier and the procession was a merry one, excited chattering reigning loud over the entire group as each child talked over the rest about their focus, what it was made of and how awesome their magic was going to be.

Akomachi-sensei was engrossed in explaining to Kenji that no, just because his fan was made of kamaitachi claws, he wouldn't just be able to do wind magic, and so it was that he did not notice when Asharu suddenly stiffened, then relaxed and calmly wandered away from the group and into an alleyway between two shops. There was a dim flash, and then nothing. It was not until they reached the school again and the teacher took roll that he noticed that the black-haired boy was missing.

XxXxXxXxX

Behind the wheel of her never-before-used Jaguar XJ220, Semiramis pondered her good fortune.

The day had been excellent. The morning had been spent with Asharu, teaching him magecraft, and with the new Mystic Code which they had created, the Qabsu, his spells were quite impressive, for his age. Control of two non-material forces, the concepts of 'attraction' and 'repulsion' before the age of eight was quite a feat, especially as the forces could be used to attract and repel everything from ordinary matter to heat. It would make for a powerful defence at the very least.

After lunch - a delicious meal of fried fish and vegetables cooked by Shintani Ai, the chef that Semiramis had hired to cook for them -, Asharu had begun his lessons with his tutors while she took drove into Fuyuki proper. Most of the rest of the day had been spent in a conference room, talking with investors and board members of the businesses and enterprises which she had assumed command of, both in the magical world and the mundane one.

Most were doing well - she had deliberately chosen those which looked to be stable or in the ascendant - but there were a few problem cases. An unfortunate side effect of implanting hypnotic commands in the minds of others was that it all too often led to a decrease in their reasoning abilities and independence, meaning that with many of the crises she was forced to intervene herself, offering 'advice' on how to rectify falling profit margins and unfortunate turns of the market.

Another pet project of hers which she was working on in conjunction with the goblins of Gringotts was the founding of a number of minor, seemingly unconnected companies, which spanned the borders of the wizarding and mundane worlds over in Europe. The isolation of the wizards would be a great asset in this, as the disconnect between the prices of mundane and magical goods allowed her to buy cheaply in one 'world' and sell at high prices in another. For all that the transfiguration of the wizards could not create noble metals without high-level alchemical catalysts, many materials which could be transmuted - silicon, for example - were becoming valuable in the mundane world for the manufacture of computers and similar devices. Similarly, commodities such as furniture could be bought in the mundane world and sold for higher prices in the wizarding world, where production lines were unheard of and such items were all handmade. Even with magic to aid them, it was far less efficient.

All in all, it had been a most productive day - week, in fact - and she was looking forward to hearing about the Mystic Code - focus, the wizards called it - which Asharu would be purchasing today. The concept was an interesting one and only so much could be learnt from books on wandlore and the making of foci.

Slowing down, the ancient queen turned down into the driveway of the house and pulled up, turning off the engine. She gathered the folder on the passenger's seat, along with her new laptop - a most wonderful tool - and climbed out of the car.

As she opened the door of the house, Semiramis noticed a small piece of paper on the floor. Picking it up, she unfolded it.

In bold, computerised type it read:

 **We have your son.**

 **Come to Warehouse 4 at the Fuyuki docks at 10:30 PM. Bring**

 **¥ 80,000,000†. Inform no-one and bring nothing else.**

 **We will be waiting.**

Her face horrifically blank, the resurrected sorceress carefully placed her folder and laptop down on the sideboard in the hallway. Only her hands, which shook slightly, betrayed her mingled fury and terror for her son. Her thoughts raced, scenarios tumbling through her head, each one more terrible than the last. Then ways in which she could exact her vengeance. There was no question of defeat. It was not an option. Whoever these mongrels were, they would be no match for the power of a Heroic Spirit, even in the limited shell of a Servant. She refused to even consider the possibility, let alone yielding a single yen to the thrice-accursed curs.

The trembling stilled. A decision was reached.

Whoever the worms were which had stolen her son, they would pay in blood and whatever else she saw fit to take as reparations.

Their lives would be the least of the penalties she would demand.

XxXxXxXxX

* A shapeshifting fox spirit

** Mother

*** Fox-fire

†About £550,000

 **A/N:** Aaaaaaand cliffhanger. Aren't I evil?

Anyway, I've got this out as quickly as I could. I hope you enjoy it and leave me a review to help me improve my writing a little more.


	8. Chapter 8

A/N: So, a new chapter and the longest one yet. I hope you like it.

A warning for you, there is death in this chapter. Not of a major character, or even likable ones and it's not graphic, but it is there nonetheless and it's not especially pretty.

 **Disclaimer:** I do not own Harry Potter or the Nasuverse. Those belong to J.K. Rowling and TYPE-MOON and Kinoko Nasu, respectively.

* * *

By the time that Semiramis arrived outside the warehouse in a swirl of purple-black un-light, the clear weather of the afternoon had soured. Grey, tired clouds had trudged across the sky as the sun sank below the horizon and a chill drizzle floated down. No stars could be seen between the colourless blankets which covered the sky.

The tarmac was slick and wet beneath the queen's shoes as she strode purposefully towards the building's door. The spells she had prepared on the Gardens hummed gently against her skin, the Dragon Tooth Warriors ready to congeal into being from their unnatural mists. With her Item Creation Skill, the legendary poisoner had treated the familiars' blades with a powerful paralytic neurotoxin, designed specifically to render the kidnappers immobile while simultaneously igniting their nerve endings and preserving them for later use.

A quick death would be far to merciful a fate for these mongrels.

Of course, she didn't intend to leave them to the familiars alone. For all their virtues, the Dragon Tooth Warriors were fragile at best and she suspected that they would not last overly long. After all, for all that they were little better than worms, her opponents were either wizards or magi - as indicated by the faint traces of prana which had tainted the ransom note - and it would not do to underestimate them.

Besides the familiars, the ancient sorceress had prepared a battery of curses and maledictions to launch at the kidnappers. None would be fatal, of course, but they would be far from pleasant. After all, all that she required for what she had planned was that they survived. The loss of a limb or four would pose no problem to her designs.

Confident in her preparations, Semiramis allowed her clothes to sublimate into a crumpled business suit, which was swiftly darkened by the soft rain. Allowing an expression of intense worry and distress to take over her features and grasping the handle of the empty briefcase in her right hand, the ancient queen eased open the warehouse door.

Inside, the room was dominated by monolithic cargo containers and stacks of crates, stretching like strange sarsens towards the harsh light of the fluorescent tubes which hung from the far-distant ceiling, swinging gently. From around the pinnacles came the sound of men talking, although the exact words were too faint to make out. She deliberately allowed her shoes to clack against the concrete floor, dispelling any illusions that they might have had that she intended to sneak up on them.

"I have the money," called the Servant, taking care to inject a faint tremor into her voice, "What should I do?"

A pause, and then a shouted reply: "Bring it here. No tricks, or your boy will find himself with an impromptu head piercing."

The Servant followed the voice, resisting the temptation to let loose with her magics in the name of ensuring that her son was safe from whatever retribution that the kidnappers might exact, should he still be in their custody when she launched her attack. Turning a corner around a dull red container, she came across her foes.

They were a professional-looking bunch, dressed sharply in suits and trousers. On their necks, the multi colored shape of a draconic claw could be seen, marking them as Yakuza members. Wizards, then, as no magus would lower themselves to working in a mundane syndicate. Their faces were concealed by a mask of shifting shadows, through which the suggestion of features could be seen, but no details.

Of the four, two held a pair of ofuda each, while a third grasped an ornate fan. The fourth held a black, short-barrelled pistol to the head of an unconscious Asharu, who was propped up on a wooden chair. A wooden ring adorned the index finger of his right hand, the one splayed open towards her.

The gun-user spoke. "Put the briefcase on the ground. Keep your hands on you head once you've done that. No sudden moves."

She did so, setting the case down and sliding it over with her foot. The gunman made a quick series of motions with his free hand and case lifted from the floor, floating gently over to the group. One of the ofuda-users grabbed it out of the air, opened it and looked inside. Apparently satisfied by the illusion of stacks of yen notes which he found there, he turned to the gunman and nodded. He made a similar series of motions to that he had used before, except that this time it was Asharu who lifted from the ground and levitated towards his mother. As the child neared her, she pulled him from the air and into her arms.

"There. That wasn't so hard, was it?" said the gunman, whose weapon was now directed at the Servant. "Now, if you could just leave quietly, our business will have been concluded."

Semiramis made to turn and then, as if changing her mind, faced them again. Allowing the facade of worry to fall from her features, she fixed the group with a smile that had all the warmth and merriment of a shark's.

"Actually, I think you owe me something. You stole my son. A little chastisement is in order, I think."

Even as she spoke, the resurrected sorceress allowed the cuneiform symbols of a protective spell to fade into existence before her while the purplish mists that were the beginnings of the Dragon Tooth Warriors flowed up and out of the cracks in the concrete. Skeletal shapes began to coalesce from the vapours, crude swords grasped in fleshless hands.

"Want your money back, do you?" asked the gunman, clearly the spokesman of the group. He seemed less sure of himself than a moment before, but his voice nevertheless remained solid.

"Of course not," replied the queen, "I want… _you_."

With those words, the mist surged out and the battle began. It didn't last long.

Tides of skeletal warriors surged from the smog, which hung low to the ground like some great serpent coiling about them. One of the ofuda-users swiftly pulled out a while flurry of talismans and flung them into the air with a shouted "Shoheki!", establishing a barrier against their foes while the others launched a flurry of curses and offensive magic towards the familiars. Against human foes, it would have been a daunting position to challenge, a combination of impressive offense with an equally powerful defense. These mongrels had clearly been well-trained to work together.

It was a pity for them that neither she nor her troops were human.

For every warrior their curses brought down, three more joined the horde beating at the barrier, which shimmered and flickered a little more with each impact. Holes made by blasting curses were quickly filled in with more bodies, while any spells which made it through the horde merely splashed harmlessly against her defenses.

Raising a hand, Semiramis calmly began a to bring down their shield, not bothering to use Divine Words or a swifter magic.

"Waters beat at black stones, wearing them down to dust," she muttered, as a crushing purple light began to gather about the yakuza's barrier. "All things beneath the waves return to silt and sand."

With the last word, the magic broke upon the shield like a wave upon the shore and its light faded, taking the wizards' protection with it.

The fan-user was the first to fall to the familiars' blades, a scratch on his arm from a swiftly-dispelled warrior introducing the poison to his body. A few seconds passed with no perceptible ill effect, before his rapidly-beating heart carried the venom around his body and it began to take effect. A strangled scream split the air and Semiramis smiled coldly as he fell to the floor in the foetal position, eyes rolling madly but the muscles of his throat too constricted to cry out further. The others followed swiftly, the gunman emptying the last of his clip before finally falling atop his fallen comrades.

The familiars relinquished their weapons and most faded into mist again, save for the eight that set down their weapons and hefted the kidnappers, carrying them out to the van which the sorceress had hired, ready for transport back to the Gardens.

The Servant laid her unconscious son in the passenger seat of her car and purred away from the warehouse. Driverless, the Transit followed behind, its controls operated by the phantom threads of prana which trailed from the window of the Jaguar.

* * *

It was almost midnight by the time that Semiramis had placed her son safely in his bed on the Gardens. The drizzle which continued unabated below held no dominion there above the clouds. The moon's silver light splashed against the equally pale marble walkways of the floating Phantasm and flung the sharp-edged shadows of her small entourage of Dragon Tooth Warriors and their human burdens on the towering columns which lined the walkways. She was not done with the kidnappers of her child and she would make sure that they served her purpose in the end. It was only right that reparations be owed to the wronged party, after all.

The little procession wended its way into the depths of the Gardens, to the throne room that was its heart. There, a golden throne stood proud in the centre of a room whose floor was inscribed with an impossibly complex matrix of jewelled magic circles, channels of frozen mercury and veins of silver, all set in place to provide the perfect environment for the casting of High Thaumaturgy, magecraft might enough to verge upon the realms of Magic. The sorceress-queen set herself upon the throne, making herself the centrepiece of the miracle of arcane engineering. Power flowed into her, burning through her veins in a tide of frozen fire. It was intoxicating as always, the heady knowledge that, here, marvels which rivaled the very gods themselves could be worked.

With the merest suggestion of a commanding thought, the Dragon Tooth Warriors relinquished the kidnappers into the hold of the restricting magics which had sprung into existence with a muttered Word of **Binding**. Here, there was no fear of overusing her Divine Voice. The Gardens themselves would sing her will, if need be. A second Word, **Cleansing** , purged the venom from the bodies of the unfortunate wizards. A few seconds, perhaps half a minute, passed before they seemed to reclaim their senses and awareness from the haze of pain they had existed in since the poison had first been introduced.

"Wha- what is this? Where are we? "

"What is this place?!"

"This is my Garden, mongrel-san. What do you think of it? Beautiful, no? It should be. After all, they say that the best things cost the most, and the price for this perfection was a steep one. After all, it was not until after I died that I was able to see its beauty."

"I don't know what you're on, lady, but if you think you can hurt us and get off with nothing, think again. The Namikawa family's not just a street gang. We've got the contacts to pull down anything you've ever built and crucify you in the ashes."

The young man looked pleased with his tirade, and his comrades seemed to regain some measure of their composure as well.

Semiramis savoured their hope. So adorable, that they thought their petty mortal organizations could threaten _her_ , a daughter of the goddess Derketo. A word, and the speaker's bindings constricted, pressing the skin tight against his ankles and wrists. The pop of a dislocation could be heard, alongside the pained "Aarghh!" that squeezed itself from his throat.

"Wha-what do you want?" asked one of the other kyodai*, bravado once more absent.

"I want you to pay the debt you owe me." stated Semiramis, languidly lounging on her throne and swilling a flute of fine, blood-red wine which had been delivered only a moment ago by one of the Dragon Tooth Warriors. "You stole my precious son, and so I demand blood-payment, which I shall exact in the form of your knowledge and your magic cores. Your lives as well, in all likelihood, as I have never before had the opportunity to extract a full magic core from one of your kind."

"You think you can get away killing us off? You think the Family doesn't track us and our state? These tattoos aren't for nothing."

" **Silence**." All sound within the throne room vanished, save for the ominous finality of the sorceress' pronouncement and the whisper of her dress as she drew herself up, straight-backed and proud. "I can assure, you, no magic that your kind could achieve could pierce my protections, mongrel-san. I am orders of magnitude above your pitiful practitioners." She lit her eyes with her Divinity and silently delighted in the immediate reaction on the faces, the instinctual fear that was bone-deep within the lineage of humanity, the ancestral recollections of ancient abuses and utter helplessness in the face of a superior being.

"Now, for your defiance, you shall be the first to pay your toll. Be good, now, and I might allow you a quick death."

It was almost morning when the queen emerged from the throne room again. Behind her, four prismatic orbs of light, each trailing kaleidoscopic energy like the tail of a comet, orbited the throne. On the floor, the last of four corpses vanished into purple motes of light, fading from existence.

* * *

 _The darkness was a cloak, lying heavy and soft against the ground. The night sky was hidden behind a veil of low-hanging cloud and even the screech-owls kept their silent peace. A pall was on the land, an unnatural silence which caused more than one peasant in the city below to lock the doors of their clay-brick huts and pray to the distant gods that no demons would creep in with the shadows and snatch them away._

 _In one place, though, the silence was banished by loud, boisterous laughter and the dark was chased away by a profusion of oil-lamps and witch-lights. The king's court made merry in the dark of the night, celebrating his marriage to his new queen, not three days past. She was as beautiful as Ishtar herself, he boasted to his councilor for the fourth time that evening, and twice as flexible in their wedding bed. In fact, claimed the king, he thought he'd partake again._

 _Downing a horn of wine and climbing to his feet, the king Ninus strode over to where the new queen - his mother, Asharu realised - lounged on a divan, surrounded by the prettily giggling forms of her courtiers. They parted before him like waters before the keel of a ship and he leant down to whisper something in the ear of the young queen. She propped herself up and whispered something back, prompting the king's boisterous laughter to split the night. He led her out of the great feasting-hall and into the labyrinth of the palace._

 _Behind them, the party wore on into the night, the atmosphere slowly quieting as the guests succumbed to the embraces of wine-sodden slumber and the silence reclaimed its domain._

 _In the morning, the king's illness was written off as merely the aftereffects of his indulgences the night before. It was not until that afternoon, as the sun reached the horizon once more and the periodic vomiting had not stopped, that the court began to worry. Healers, doctors and priests were called, but none could divine a cause for the illness beyond the king's aging body and too much alcohol. That night was devoid of revelry, for the king had determined that if he was to be denied wine, so would his court._

 _He woke twice more before the end. On the third night, the new queen awoke in bed with a cold corpse._

 _Doves winged their way to the temples of the undertakers and the funerary priests, carrying the news of the king's death._

 _King Ninus was entombed with all splendour and the young queen knelt beside his mausoleum with tears tracking down her face._

 _One who knew her well, though, might have seen the flash of triumph in her yellow, slitted eyes._

 _The yellow-orange luminescence of the setting sun grew to encompass his sight, drowning out all detail, before it receded again._

 _In its wake, the world was transfigured._

 _Now, the yellow light emanated from the sodium streetlamps which the car passed under, first growing into dazzling brightness before receding again into the vast nether expanses of the world behind the vehicle. He was in the back seat squashed between two burly, suited men, while another, similarly-dressed pair sat in the front of the car, conversing._

 _Asharu didn't care to hear what they were saying, though. He was conscious of little but a soft, all-consuming contentment and could not bring himself to think of anything in particular. Indistinct, fuzzy memories floated around in his skull, recollections of Gardens and magic and Mother, but none of it mattered...right now._

 _The car pulled up abruptly outside a large warehouse - idly, Asharu recognised it as being by the harbour - and the men climbed out of the car. A soft voice in his head asked if he would climb out of the car and he did so, gladly. After all, what harm would it do, and it was the same voice which had brought the warmth and happiness._

 _The voice came again, asking him to go around to the boot of the car and take out the shopping bag there. He did so, reasoning blearily that he'd done this sort of thing loads before at the Dursleys. It was just sensible, wasn't it?_

 _He followed three of the men into the warehouse, carrying the bag in both hands, while the fourth took the car around the back of the grey building. The black-haired child set the bag on one of the lower crates and, at the urging of the voice, separated out the boxed meals it contained. Each of the men took their share, although there was a small squabble over one of the packs of sushi, and settled themselves on various crates._

 _The child sat himself down likewise and sat quietly, as the voice said. The men ate quickly and quietly, only a few terse words shared between them. Eventually, one made a series of quick mudras with his beringed hand and the voice vanished, just in time for blackness to claim Asharu's vision._

* * *

Asharu awoke, a rasping gasp tearing itself from his lips as he sat up in his bed, coming face-to-face with the lurid green snake which hung from the ribs of the trellis which passed for a ceiling.

Its tongue flickered out, then in again as the image made its way through the groggy brain of a just-woken 7-year-old. Then he reacted.

"Ahh!"

Hissing laughter followed him as he flung himself back onto the bed.

 _§Young-hatchling-speaker is slow to wake.§_

 _§How would you like it if someone was leaning over you when you woke?§_ retorted the young wizard as he pulled himself up again. _§Do you know when I got back? I just remember going back to the school, and then...§_ He broke off, disjointed images haunting his psyche.

 _§Mother-two-leg laid you on the white-soft-night-stone when White-Nestsister-of-Sun was high in the sky two turns-of-the-sun ago,§_ the serpent answered, oblivious to the child's distraction. _§Mother-two-leg took two-times-two two-legs to the golden-room. Mother-two-leg waits outside for your awaking.§_

Used to the odd manner of speaking which attended the use of snake-speech, Asharu distracted himself with decoding the snake's remarks. Numbers were always strange, as snakes seemed to like counting in twos. "Because of the forks of our tongues", Seru had once told him when he had asked. So he'd been asleep for two days? What happened?

" _Ummu_ **, I'm awake," he called.

The doorway darkened with the silk-garbed shadow of Semiramis as she swept into the room.

"Are you well, _Atmu_?" asked the magus, her hand reaching over to cup Asharu's cheek as she often did when she was concerned for him.

The flashing images returned, streetlamps and delirious happiness burning behind his eyes. He hugged his arms tight around himself, pushing them from his mind. "I'm f-fine, _Ummu_. What happened? I just remember leaving the focus shop, walking back towards the school a bit, and then it's just kinda... blank."

The Servant paused dubiously before answering. When the words came they were clipped and clinical.

"You were kidnapped. They were yakuza, and wizards, and asked for money."

"D-did you give it to them?" asked the green-eyed child, hugging himself tighter. The idea seemed fantastical, something which happened on the news and in the red-light quarters, not in the middle of the wizard's district.

A vicious smile spread across Semiramis' face.

"Of course not. You know what I am, do you not? The were merely modern wizards, no match for me."

"What did you do to them?" he asked, innocently.

"I can show you, if you would like. Before that, though, I have something to give you. Something to stop something like this from happening again."

The sorceress reached into her dress and withdrew a short, thin object. It was twice as long as her hand, and wrapped in a purple cloth such that only its outline could be seen. Almost reverently, the black-haired Servant peeled back the wrappings to reveal what lay beneath.

The knife was simple-looking, a plain handle and unadorned guard leading up into a blade shaped like an elongated teardrop. The metal was of dark bronze with a slight greenish tint. The only visual indicator that it was more than it seemed were the angular cuneiform symbols inscribed on the flat of the blade.

"This is Ša Imti, a Mystic Code I made myself for you. Its blade bears a conceptual venom, a poison which will corrupt and destroy all magecraft and wizardry, save yours and mine. The blade is made of bronze cooled in my own blood and the venom of the Bashmu-serpent. Take it."

Tentatively, he did so, wrapping his right hand around the hilt of the dagger. The moment he did so there was a burning sensation on his palm, the glyphs flared turquoise and the knife dissolved into blue-green motes of light. The particles whirled in place for an instant, before surging into his hand. By the time they had vanished, the same symbols which were inscribed on the dagger were emblazoned upon the young wizard's palm.

"You will be able to recall it to your hand with but a thought. If it is ever stolen, you can do the same. Promise me, though, that you will be cautious with its use. It is a powerful weapon and its abilities should not be made known."

A little overwhelmed, Asharu nodded.

"You asked, before, what punishment I levied to the men who stole you. Can you walk to the throne room?"

In answer, the black-haired child slipped out of the bed, placing his feet on the cold floor. He pulled himself upright, then took as step, wobbled a little, then folded towards the floor as his legs, weak from days lying still, betrayed him. Semiramis caught him before he hit the floor.

"I'll take that as a no, then."

She held him while he worked some strength back into his limbs, with the help of a minor healing magic. The actual walk was little more than a minute or so, punctuated by the black-haired child practicing the summoning and dismissal of the knife, until the pair stood at the entrance to the circular chamber where the throne of the Gardens stood.

Suspended in the air hung four multicoloured orbs, scribing slow, deliberate circles around the throne like planets orbiting a sun. Their mingled light threw a tableau of shifting hues against the floor of the throne room, reminding Asharu of the light on the ceiling of the indoor swimming pool that they sometimes visited in Fuyuki. That room had always felt odd to the young wizard, perpetually charged with the coppery taste of Semiramis' magic. Now, though, there were other, fainter flavours mixed in, a hint of peppermint alongside the taint of woodsmoke.

"Those are the magic cores of the curs which kidnapped you," declared the queen, startling the young wizard from his wonderment.

He looked at her in surprise for a moment, before what she said really sank in. Those were magic cores, the same things which let wizards do their magic and without which, they could not live. Suzukaze-sensei had told them so in Basic Arcanoanatomy. The dots connected and Asharu took a small step back.

"They're dead." he stated in a small voice.

Semiramis looked down at him, the subtle signs of confusion playing out across her face.

"Yes. Are you not happy that your tormentors are gone, that they received their just punishment?"

Asharu reflexively wound his arms around himself, pulling his hand from his mother's grip. He was silent as her expression fell, from confused satisfaction to worry. Then, almost inaudible, even to a Servant's senses, he replied.

"I don't know."

* * *

*Upper-class enforcers in the Yakuza, trusted with the more delicate missions than general leg-breaking. Like kidnapping, for instance.

**An informal version of 'mother'. Basically 'mum'.

 **A/N:** And there's another chapter.

I've been getting a number of questions from various people (notably Paxloria) about things like what class Semiramis is, what her Noble Phantasm does and so on. Short answer: look her up on the TYPE-MOON wiki. Long answer: she's Assassin, with the Double Summon skill which gives her many of the abilities of Caster. Her Noble Phantasm, which bears more resemblance to Laputa from the Studio Ghibli anime than anything else, amplified and strengthens her magecraft to the point that she can replicate aspects of the True Magics while within its bounds. She does have a wish for the Grail, but that is something you'll have to wait to find out. It won't be that long.

To the reviewer Space BB, who annoyed me by asking a whole bunch of questions on a guest review, so I couldn't answer them: First, thank you for the kind compliments (alliteration intended). This universe includes both the TYPE-MOON universe and the Harry Potter one. They kind of co-exist in a semi-peaceful, semi-ignorant state. For the rest, I'm afraid you're going to have to wait and see. The only hint I'm giving is that Harry's not going to attend Hogwarts properly. A visit, yes, attending, no.

And to those who misunderstand, Sa Imti can corrode all _mortal_ magecraft and wizardry. Existences like Noble Phantasms, Heroic Spirits and the like are beyond its abilities to destroy. It simply lacks the Authority to do more than inhibit them. Quite apart from that, its effects take time to manifest, although it would be utterly devastating if used directly on a wizard or magus, as it would corrode away their Magic Circuits or Core. _Extremely_ painfully, over the course of a few days.


	9. Chapter 9

**A/N:** So, another chapter. I'm glad that people seemed to like the last one so much. I do have a request, though. If you have a question to ask me via review, please post the review with an account, not as a guest.

And before people get on me about it, the views expressed about the worship of the Abrahamic God are Semiramis' as I would imagine she would see it, not mine.

 **Disclaimer:** I do not own TYPE-MOON or Harry Potter.

* * *

"Man, is Grandpa pissed," declared the young woman seated across from Kiritsugu Emiya, her shoulder-length ochre-coloured hair swaying animatedly. The bowl of rice in her hand swayed perilously to and fro as she gesticulated while the chopsticks in the other were stabbed viciously against the table to prove her point. "The Namikawa family's been on his back about a bunch of their guys going missing on his turf. They say he offed them, and they want to get back at him, but he says he didn't, and that only makes them more pissed."

Kiritsugu and his adopted son, Shirou, nodded solemnly in unison. They had long since learned that when Taiga Fujimura worked herself into a rant, the best course of action was to nod and listen, and then talk once she had finished.

"He says they didn't have any business being in Fuyuki without his permission anyway-" She paused, shovelling a mouthful of rice down with the chopsticks, before resuming. "And they don't have any backup here, so they shouldn't complain if the job went wrong."

Sensing an opening, Kiritsugu broke in.

"What were they doing here anyway?"

"Well, they said that they were doing a ransom job - and Grandpa doesn't like that kind of thing anyway - and then the kyodai they sent out just didn't come back. The trackers didn't return anything either, so they're not just dead." A malicious grin crawled its way across her face and he leant over the table towards Shirou. "They just vanished. Maybe it was _ghoooosts…_ "

The red-haired child blinked owlishly back at her.

She plopped back into her seat, muttering "You're no fun." under her breath.

"So yeah," she continued, her chopsticks scribing lazy circles in the air "They can't pin anything on Grandpa, because all they know is that the guys disappeared. Grandpa said to stay away from west Tokyo, if we could help it, for the next few weeks, though. That's where the Namikawas set up shop."

A few more mouthfuls of rice were devoured in short order.

"He also said that he was going to be organising some people to look around for any information on whatever happened to the Namikawa guys." She leaned in conspiratorially "He even said that it might even be yokai* that did it, so he's bringing in a couple of the family's Mahōtsukai** to deal with it."

"Mahōtsukai?" asked the former magus. He had heard, of course, of the magic-users which lived side-by-side with the normal people of Japan. They were nothing like magi, so he wasn't all that concerned with them. The creatures which they often dealt with, though were a whole other matter.

The part of him that once held onto his ideal of salvation ached inside, trying to compel him to help, to hunt down whatever did this, to do _something_. He quashed it down, burying it under the pain of the Grail's curses and the light in Shirou's eyes. He wasn't that person anymore. Let the Fujimuras handle it.

"Yeah, he's really going all out." The formerly rice-filled bowl now lay barren and empty on the low table. "I talked to one of them. What was his name? Ummm.. Mako? No. Uhhh… Mikoto! Mikoto Yusuke. He gave everyone in the family one of…" she pulled her satchel over to her and rummaged around in it for a moment, before pulling out her keyring, attached to which was a small red talisman, not unlike the ones which Ryuudou Temple sold. "These! He said that they'd warn us if there was something weird about. I think mine's broken, though. It started doing its little thing when I got here. Ne, you're not a wizard, are you, 'Sugu-san?"

Kiritsugu tried hard not to choke a little on his tea. Shirou wasn't quite so subtle and looked with wide eyes at Taiga, his mouth hanging open a little.

Luckily, the kendo champion's capricious mind seemed to have already flitted to its next line of inquiry.

"So how did school go, Shirou-kun?"

"Eto… It was OK, I guess." replied the young boy. "There was this girl, Matou Sakura-chan, who was being really weird, though."

"Ooohh?" inquired Taiga "Sakura- _chan_ , huh? Has Shirou-kun found himself a girlfriend?"

"No!"

" _Reeeeally_? Are you _suuuure?_ "

Kiritsugu quietly ate his rice, greedily drinking in the sounds of the two younger occupants of the room squabbling good-naturedly. It almost took his mind off of his daughter, Illya, back at the Einzbern castle and the bone-deep ache of the Grail's curses running through his veins.

* * *

In the days following Asharu's waking, the relationship between him and Semiramis was more strained than it had ever been since she had taken him from the Dursleys' in the first place. The young wizard seemed to have partly retreated back into the timid shell he had worn at his relatives' house and lost much of the confidence and self-assurance which he had built up in the intervening years. The school had allowed a leave of absence to deal with whatever issues might arise from the kidnapping and it was lucky that they did so.

For those few days, the child seemed to Semiramis' eyes like a ghost, wandering the Gardens. He spent long periods simply staring out over the sea of clouds which washed against the edges of the floating palace, or else obsessively practiced the magecraft which he channelled through his Qabsu. He had created a spell, a simple magic by which he condensed water from the air around the clay spheres - of which there were three, now. It was the first spell which Asharu had ever made on his own, without her aid, and she wondered how long he had been working on it in secret. Creating a new spell was not a thing done in only a day or two, after all. It was an important milestone in the education of a magus, and he seemed to care little for it.

It worried the ancient queen. In more ordinary circumstances, she was sure that the apprentice magus would have showed the spell to her with utmost pride, a joyful smile gracing his face as she inquired as to its mechanics. In another life, it might have been a moment for them to share. In this one, it was merely a lost opportunity.

Asharu's silence gave her time to consider recent events. Times had changed, she realised, and with them the people. Of course, it was obvious that the world had changed enormously since her lifetime. It would be impossible not to realise that. It had not truly occurred to her before then, though, how much the values of the people had changed in that time. Her adopted son had not been brought up in her time, nor in the amoral care of a family of magi. He had been raised with the values of the modern world - and with the values of his reprehensible relatives, for that matter - so it was only natural that he would be disturbed by her exacting of the justice appropriate to her time.

Such a morality would ill-equip him for the Grail War, though, and the harsh choices it would bring. As much as it pained her, it would be better for Asharu to enter the War with eyes wide open than to open them there, amidst what would doubtless be a bloody and merciless conflict.

For now, though, he was still a child, and one in need of his mother's comfort.

It took almost a week for the young wizard to abandon his isolation and begin to speak to Semiramis of his own volition again. The warmth of their bond was slow in returning, but eventually it did, coinciding neatly with Asharu's return to his tutors and wizarding school. His focus arrived as well, a ring of pale maple wood inlaid with a greyish thread which the accompanying letter claimed was taken from the feathers of a tengu*** and and the two bonded once more over discovering its capabilities.

The excited smile which split her son's face from ear to ear upon using the focus for the first time was worth any hardship, to the Servant. Even if its powers were limited to the channeling of minor, innocuous magics, it was still magical, and magic was something which never failed to ignite a spark of wonder in the child's eyes.

It would have been a perfect time, had not the queen returned to her residence in the shadow of Mount Miyama to discover a beady-eyed and oily-feathered raven standing sentinel upon the wrought iron fence which encircled her garden, a message on its leg and the taint of prana in the air.

* * *

The church to which she had been summoned via familiar loomed over Semiramis' homunculus like a broken tooth piercing towards the sky. Such a building being a house of worship was a strange thing, to the Assyrian queen's eyes. In her time, the gods had been praised in the shadows of great ziggurats and monolithic temples, the greatest buildings in the cities - barring, sometimes, the royal palaces. This church, though, was little larger than a sizable house, a poor match for the glass-skinned skyscraped which inhabited the city centre.

Perhaps it was something to do with the nameless God which this religion worshipped. A God which espoused humbleness and humility. How such a being could inspire such a following was beyond her. What could one hope to achieve in the service of such a deity, when the very gathering of power and prestige was viewed as an affront to 'righteous' living? She much preferred the now-dead gods of her native land. For all their capricious cruelty, they at least did not claim to be righteous in the creation of all suffering.

Casting such thoughts aside, she directed the homunculus, grown from seeds taken from the Gardens, planted in its soil and watered with her blood, to push aside the wrought-iron gate of the churchyard and walk towards the door of the church proper, where a brown-haired man in a black priest's robe and wearing a golden cross around his neck stood, a faint, sardonic smile playing on his lips.

As she approached, he spoke. His voice was low and cultured.

"You are not the Master who was summoned."

"I am not. What wisdom would there be in risking my Master in such a perilous situation as this?"

"Surely it would be no risk, for one with the power to keep a Servant materialised without the aid of the Holy Grail."

Clever man. He was fishing for information.

"My Master is capable, true, but there is no need for undue exposure when it could easily be avoided."

The smile returned.

"Surely you do not intend to keep them closeted away from the world until the Grail materialises? After all, the heretics of the Mage's Association are cutthroat in the extreme, and not without cunning. Surely the danger in revealing themselves to the Church is the lesser of the perils, compared to the risk of a magus discovering them without the Holy Church's backing behind them?"

"Perhaps, but such matters should not be discussed in the open. Shall we enter? Surely you would not deny a lady the sanctuary of the church, even when she comes in the stead of another?"

The priest chuckled, and opened the door.

"For all that the false life of a homunculus is a blight upon my Lord's creation, I am sure He will permit your entry."

The inside of the church was light and airy, the large windows which lined the hall allowing the morning's sunlight to stream in. The air was cold and, if Semiramis stretched her senses, a taint could be detected on the draught from the open doorway, not dissimilar to the malevolence which polluted the earth in a large swathe of Shinto. And beneath that, there was something else, the faint sounding of a golden trumpet to the discordant tones of crawling curses. The resurrected sorceress noted the sensation for later investigation.

She turned to the priest, even as he closed the doors with an echoing thud.

"So, what more do you want of me, beyond the certainty that a Servant has already been summoned?"

"If I may, what class were you summoned under? Given your current form, I would hazard a Caster, or perhaps a strange Rider."

"I am Servant Assassin."

"Both an assassin and a magus? You are a woman of many talents, my lady." A sarcastic bow accompanied the pronouncement. The priest's casual manner pricked at Semiramis' pride. The phantom tones of golden horns, sounded louder, and this time the queen recognised them as the spiritual core of another Servant, albeit distorted by some other force. Was she the second Heroic Spirit to be summoned for the War?

Her musings were interrupted by the clarion call of another voice, its arrogant tones perfectly mirroring the sensation which accompanied its prana.

"What a pitiful Servant, to stoop to using a meat doll instead of coming here yourself. Have you no shame, dog?"

The speaker revealed himself on the last word, stepping out from behind one of the columns which lined the church. His hair was a pale, golden blond and his skin likewise. His eyes were a burning, ruby red, alight with confidence and arrogance and each was split in two by a pitch-black pupil. He wore a black jacket, the zipper left undone to reveal the button-up shirt beneath. His hands were sunk lazily in the pockets of his jeans.

Despite his modern dress, though, every nuance of his stance and presence screamed that he was something _other_ , to all those with the eyes to look and the knowledge to accept the offerings of their senses. This being was something beyond human, even as she herself was. At the same time, simply calling him a Servant would be as incorrect as calling him a human. His body had the minute imperfections, the tiny irregularities which the Grail did not impart to the quasi-spiritual bodies of Servants. It marked him as something different, a physical existence.

Deciding, even in the face of her wounded pride, to err on the side of caution, the queen inclined her head towards him, offering him that least of respects.

"All too often, pride leads to the downfall of heroes such as us, would you not agree? Therefore, I shall be circumspect in my designs on the Holy Grail, hoping to avoid such a fate."

"Ha! Such are the words of a coward, unworthy of their existence among the ranks of the Heroic Spirits. Such creatures as you are less than dogs, you are worms, unworthy even of the earth upon which you crawl!" His face contorted into a disgusted sneer and a ripple of golden light bloomed into existence beside him. "If such Servants as you are the warriors of this War, it will be no war at all. Begone from my presence, worm!"

So saying, a thunderbolt in the shape of a golden spear leapt from the golden ripple, thrusting through the air towards the homunculus. Twisting, the construct evaded the first lance, but a second ripple erupted and spat forth another blade, this time a sword, into her path. The steel was an icy shock to her innards as it pierced the flesh of her abdomen, a lance of ice through her stomach which drove her to her knees. A second lance demolished the head of the construct, and the link between it and the queen was severed in a burst of pain.

On her throne at the heart of the Hanging Gardens, Semiramis sagged a little where she sat. Despite her power, such a forceful ejection was still disorienting. Such momentary discomfort was well worth it, for the information gleaned. Oh, to be sure, neither the priest nor the golden-haired Servant had revealed anything explicitly, much could be deduced from their short interactions.

The Servant - likely some kind of unorthodox Archer, given its long-range attacks - was a paradoxical existence, a creature with the presence of a Heroic Spirit but not the body of one. He had to be sustaining himself somehow. Given his obvious arrogance, it was doubtful that he would permit a Master to hold power over him via the Command Seals and even beyond that, his physical existence would make it so that he needed prana only to fuel his supernatural abilities and Noble Phantasms. That line of reasoning inevitably led to the conclusion that he was siphoning off the souls of humans to sustain himself and, given that no mysterious deaths or coma cases had been reported in the city, it was likely that he had some kind of dedicated prana-source. A weakness which she could exploit.

The priest, on the other hand, was a strange one. For all that he held a 'holy' office, his words were always undercut by a note of sarcasm, a fundamental insincerity. He quietly mocked his own God and even her, a Heroic Spirit. He was trained as a magus, as evidenced by the active Magic Circuits which had been pulsing beneath his skin as soon as the golden Servant had appeared, and as a martial artist of no small skill; his wasteless tread attesting to that. Most important, though, had been the lack of any kind of surprise when the Servant had made itself known. They were acquainted, at least, and likely allies.

Yes, mused the queen, they were a mysterious and dangerous pair. The first course of action in countering whatever moves that they might make when the Grail War began properly would be to gather information on which Spirit the golden Servant was. Every missing piece of information was as good as a weapon in the opponent's hands.

The seeds of a suspicion had begun to gestate in the corner of her mind, old legends told to her by her adoptive father of a golden-haired king with an infinite treasury. She hoped that he was some other hero, though, as if her intuition proved prophetic, he would be a mighty foe indeed. One which she was not certain she could defeat, even with the power of the Hanging Gardens at her back.

* * *

At the head of the oaken conference table in the staff room of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Albus Dumbledore waited patiently for the last of the company he had summoned to arrive.

The faces around the table were a veritable who's-who of supporters, old friends and former members of the organisation he founded to battle Voldemort's minions, the Order of the Phoenix.

Molly and Arthur Weasley were there, having left their burgeoning brood with their aunt for the few hours the Headmaster had requested their presence while standing vigilantly behind them was the grizzled auror Alastor 'Mad-Eye' Moody, his enchanted eye whizzing this way and that. Elphias Doge, a generously proportioned friend of Dumbledore's from his schooldays was there as well, speaking with the Ministry employee Sturgis Podmore about this summer's Wizengamot meeting.

Minerva McGonagall, long-time teacher of Transfiguration at Hogwarts and head of Gryffindor house, was commiserating with Filius Flitwick and Pomona Sprout - the heads of Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff - over the state of the school's quidditch broomsticks and how they really ought to be replaced as soon as possible. Rubeus Hagrid towered over the rest even when seated, his expansive beard moving with his words as he discussed the virtues of dragons with Professor Kettleburn, Care of Magical Creatures professor.

Remus Lupin sat awkwardly on a chair halfway down the table, purplish bags hanging heavy beneath his golden eyes and bent over as if beneath some great weight. He spoke lowly with Hestia Jones, who sat next to him, speculating on the subject of the gathering and reminiscing about the 'good old days', before the first war with Voldemort. The rest of the seats were filled with an assortment of personalities, from rising stars to old money. The air was filled with a murmur of voices discussing a thousand and one different subjects.

The doors boomed open to admit a black-robed figure, oily hair framing the hard lines of his face and contrasting the paleness of his skin. The Potions professor closed the door behind him as Dumbledore stood, bringing a hush to the gathering.

"Ah, Severus, I am sorry to take you away from your experiments."

The dark man silently levelled a glare at the white-bearded headmaster as he pulled up a hair at the far end of the table. The aged wizard cleared his throat.

"Thank you, my friends, for coming today, but I am afraid that the news I have to share with you is most troubling."

From one of the multitudinous pockets of his robe - scarlet with slowly moving golden spirals, today - the Headmaster pulled a well-thumbed letter.

"Six months ago, I received this letter from Arabella, who lives near to where young Harry Potter was placed with his relatives. In it, she asked me where I had placed Harry, after taking him from his relatives," he neglected to mention how thankful the old woman had been, for removing the child from such - in her words - 'disgusting people' "and whether it would be possible for her to watch him again, as she had taken quite the shine to him."

"What's the problem, then?" asked the Weasley matriarch "Do you need someone to take him in? We'd be happy to have him over every now and then. He'd be about my Ron's age, wouldn't he?"

Dumbledore graced her with a genial, if slightly strained, smile "Were that the situation, Molly, I would like nothing better than to watch the children playing in your garden with a cup of your excellent tea. Unfortunately, that is not the case.

"I did not remove Harry from his relatives."

A ripple of speech passed around the table as the gathered men and women realised the implications of the aged wizard's words. They were quieted when the silky voice of Severus Snape cut through the noise like a polished knife through butter.

"You have attempted to locate him?"

The white-bearded headmaster nodded. "Whatever locator spells I could muster would not suffice, though. It appears that whoever abducted Harry has some impressive wards protecting their residence and that he is not permitted to leave. Some of the spells I employed would have broken through any protective magic which could be attached to his person."

Molly spoke again, her face far less jovial than before. "The poor dear, imprisoned. I'll bet you it was the Malfoys that took him, or one of their lackeys. It would be just like them."

"Fortunately, my dear, that is not within the realms of possibility. The blood wards which protected the Dursleys' residence would repel any who meant Harry harm and any who bore the Dark mark. Also, the monitor which I made for James and Lily to track Harry's state shows that he is still alive."

"I doubt that any of the old families would keep quiet if they had found Harry Potter, at any rate." chipped in Elphias Doge.

"Indeed. It is my opinion that whoever has custody of Harry is somewhere abroad."

"What do you want us to do?" asked Lupin, all tiredness gone from his visage and eyes burning with determination.

"Simply keep an ear to the ground and you can to discover any clues to Harry's whereabouts." He let a vast exhaustion seem to overtake him and he slumped. "I can only hope that Harry is still safe by the time we find him."

Harry's presence in Britain would be vital for the defeat of Voldemort when he returned. The country could not afford another lengthy civil war. He would not allow another generation to fall to the dark, or have to suffer through such a tragedy.

Two world wars, the death of his lover and a bloody conflict driven by bigotry and ignorance had taught him that there was no glory, no salvation in battles or their winning.

War was hell.

XxXxXxXxX

*Supernatural beings, in this case, Japan's magical creatures. Of the Wizarding kind, not the Phantasmal kind.

**Wizards

***A yokai which appears as a humanoid bird. Go look it up if you're curious.

 **A/N:** To those who have been asking questions about how prana and magecraft are meant to work, whether Harry can summon more Servants and so on, I'm afraid I am going to have to ask you to find your answers on the Type Moon wiki. I will be assuming a certain level of base knowledge for the writing of this story.


	10. Chapter 10

**A/N:** And I'm back, with another chapter. This one is almost entirely timeskip, I'm afraid, but the action will pick up again next chapter. Thank you to everyone who reviewed last chapter and gave their opinions.

Also, we now have over 200 favourites and more than 300 follows. I'm so happy!

 **Disclaimer:** I own neither TYPE-MOON or Harry Potter.

* * *

The sky was clear and blue above Semiramis' head as she stood on one of the many balconies which overlooked the plains of the Hanging Gardens. Every few seconds, the air was split by a sound like thunder, emanating from the golden spur which projected out over a sea of clouds beneath her and on which stood her son, practicing his latest magecraft, a spell he called the Hammer of Anu. He had designed it himself, as he often did now, and it was constructed to make especial use of his Singularity Alignment and Qabsu Mystic Codes to accelerate a projectile to immense speeds. In the eyes of many magi it would have been viewed as crude and unrefined - and in some ways it was - but it was nonetheless a powerful spell and one perfectly suited to Asharu's style. Few magical protections would hold against such an attack, and fewer magi or wizards would think to defend against it.

She smiled, both over her beloved child's inventiveness and the memories of the years which had cultivated that quality, the seven years since his kidnapping.

After their reconciliation, the bond between mother and son had only strengthened. There had been a number of visits from the police, asking questions about what, exactly, had occurred with regards to his kidnapping and how it was that Asharu had been safely returned. At first, their assumption was that she had simply paid the ransom, but when it emerged that that was not in fact the case, a great deal of fast-talking and judicious hypnosis to escape the ensuing questioning. Eventually, though, the authorities were mollified and retreated, leaving the adoptive family in peace.

After he had returned to the wizarding school on Kozushima island, time had rolled on apace. Both his magecraft and his wizardry had advanced by leaps and bounds as he bent his will with quiet determination to the task he had assigned himself in the aftermath of the event: To become strong enough that he would be able to rescue himself and, one day, to become even stronger than his mother.

A wistful smile crossed the Servant's face at the memory of her son declaring his ambition to her. The will and determination to realise his goal had shone like stars in his eyes and she found herself believing it, on some level. Certainly, it would take years yet for him to reach such a level, but she had no doubt that he would eventually achieve his dream, and outshine her. It was in his very nature, after all. He was a singularity, an axis upon which the world would turn.

He had applied himself to his studies with impressive persistence, learning both wizardry and magecraft at a rate which impressed both his teachers and Semiramis herself. He was by no means a once-in-a-generation genius, but he had a knack for devising intuitive solutions and the will to overcome any troubles that might bar his way.

He had not neglected his mundane learning, either, learning various sciences, reading widely in both literature and nonfiction texts and reaching a passable proficiency in a number of languages besides English and Japanese - German, Latin, Spanish, Greek and Assyrian among them - before he celebrated his twelfth birthing-day.

That had been quite the event. A great white pavilion had been erected in the garden of the Sharratu mansion - Sharratu being the surname which she had assumed for herself and her son - and beneath its bleached expanse a labyrinth of tables had been laid out, each laden with dozens of dishes, each prepared by chefs specifically hired for the occasion. It was a feast worthy of the birthing-day celebration of a prince, even if her son's status was not known to many of those that had attended.

The guests had been an eclectic lot, drawn from both Asharu's school friends and their parents - many of whom had been quite astonished at the pomp and circumstance of the affair - and the rest from business partners and associates of Semiramis' and their families and children. The gathering had persisted late into the evening and after the summer sun had set, many-coloured lights had illuminated the dissolving and recombining cliques on the manicured grass, while the children played at imitating their elders.

It had been the next day, after the tables had been cleared, the pavilion deconstructed and the grass had begun to struggle back into shape after ist ordeal beneath a hundred pairs of feet, that Seru, now a fully-grown and 2 metre long Western Green Mamba, had asked her son if he would take the serpent on as a familiar, as the serpent could see no better way to spend his life. He had explained that although the concept of a 'purpose', besides simply living, was a strange one to him, but that he was more than willing to try it out if it would allow him to accompany his ' _young-hatchling-speaker_ '.

The traditional familiar ritual had needed some minor adjustments, so as to preserve the snake's will and personality while still allowing for Asharu to use him as a conduit for his magic and see through his eyes, but for one of her skill it had been little more than a refreshing diversion. The ritual itself welled forward in her mind.

 _The circle was prepared, mingled blood and mercury set in intricate mandalas and patterns on the floor. Curled in the centre of the magic circle was Seru, his yellow-green coils wrapped around and over one another. The black fork of his tongue tasted the air, flickering out and in._

 _Her son stood at the edge of the circle, three of his Qabsu orbiting him like planets to a sun._

 _§Are you sure, Seru?§ he asked, looking a little nervous._

 _§Of course, young-hatchling-speaker.§ replied the serpent, indignantly. §This child-of-earth-and-sun has chosen.§_

 _Asharu's expression hardened with resolution. He stretched out his hand towards the circle, palm down and fingers splayed._

" _Adad.*"_

 _Semiramis felt the rising of prana in the air, as the three Qabsu left her son and began to trace the outer lines of the circle. Blue-green light trailed in their wake and began to spark in the silvery lines of the magic circle on the floor._

" _Let Silver and Sanguine be the foundation; the Eye and the Stave of Enki the emblems."_

 _The prana flowed along the channels of the circle, washing inwards towards the serpent at the centre. Seru twitched uncomfortably in the centre, uncoiling a little and raising his head from where it had rested._

" _From Silver and Sanguine the Chain is forged, to bind the Serpent."_

 _The prana flooded the inner circle and washed over the snake, engulfing it in a tide of almost-gaseous energy. There was a strident hiss, equally wordless to the ears of both Asharu and Semiramis. Magical energy burned through the young magus' circuits flowing out and into the Mystic Codes floating in the air, now rendered indistinguishable by their speed. He forced himself to speak the final lines of the aria at a measured pace, taking care not to rush._

" _Place the Eye atop the Stave and give the power into the possession of the Bound. Let the Bound be Eye and Stave to the Prince, when Silver and Sanguine ebb._

" _Nehu.**"_

 _The last words tumbled from his lips and the prana of the ritual faded into Seru's scales. The magus sagged, the energy of the ceremony leaving him. Semiramis stepped forwards to hold him upright, running a quick diagnostic spell to ascertain whether he had suffered any injury from the taxing rite._

 _Seru stirred from his place, slithering across the floor towards the exhausted magus. Raising his head from the ground, the serpent brought himself to eye level. Half-closed emerald eyes met their exact duplicates, set in a wedge-shaped serpentine visage._

 _At the same time, though, he saw the same eyes mirrored in a human face: his own. The colours of his vision were oddly altered, the greens and blues pronounced while reds, yellows and oranges were dampened and washed-out._

 _§It worked...§ muttered the magus under his breath._

 _§Yes, young-speaker.§ hissed the snake, swaying gently back and forth. §I am different, stronger. My venom burns within me. If this is 'purpose', I realise now why two-legs so often wail about it.§_

* * *

The years had not been completely devoid of trouble, though.

With Asharu's skill with his particular brand of magecraft came a certain arrogance which had lead him into trouble on more than one occasion. Any magus worth their salt knew that attempting spells beyond their capability was a road which lead to a painful death. Semirmais had made certain that that lesson had been pounded thoroughly into her son's head long before she allowed him to perform the tiniest cantrip on his own. The overconfidence of youth, though, combined with his knowledge of his own skill had driven Asharu to exceed his boundaries more than once.

One time had been when he was trying to master the skill which had once been called Belutu*** by the ancient magi of Assyria. It was a magic which allowed one command over their own mind and security against the manipulations of others. Like almost all magecraft, though, that power came with a price: the risk of permanent damage if the user was overzealous in its use. Unfortunately Asharu, being little more than 11 at the time and with a self-assurance born from a combination of skill, Divinity and that peculiar quality of children to see themselves as the very pinnacle of the world, decided that giving himself an eidetic memory would be an excellent idea.

A month of missed school and lessons had followed as the young magus had been confined to a bed, first for a week-long coma only kept from permanence by near-constant use of healing magic from Semiramis and the magical Healer who had been hired as an emergency measure in the aftermath of the kidnapping incident. The other three weeks had been courtesy of that same healer, who insisted that he remain abed as long as possible and meditate daily, so as to allow his jumbled mind to settle with as little interference as possible from new experiences and memories. The enforced boredom was artfully coopted to serve as an extremely effective punishment by Semiramis, leading to the young wizard being very careful thereafter not to overreach himself, even if exactly what was defined as 'overreaching' was sometimes a hot subject of debate between him and his adoptive mother.

That particular issue had flared up on a number of occasions, especially following Asharu's meeting with the Second Owner of Fuyuki - a young magus by the name of Tohsaka Rin whose task was ostensibly to regulate the magi in the city. Whoever had decided that a girl only a year older than her own son was the right one for the post, even considering the fact that Rin's father was the previous Second Owner, must never have met the younger magus, in Semiramis' opinion. The Tohsaka heir was a _spirited_ girl to say the least. The memory of her son's description of their original meeting never failed to evoke a chuckle.

 _A dark and dreary Saturday night found Asharu huddled in a long raincoat against the persistent, miserable drizzle of rain. Tall buildings clustered close around him and rose towards the leaden sky, thankfully blocking the worst of the wind as he traversed the alleys and abandoned streets of Fuyuki, seeking the signature rotten-flesh-and-rust taste of the prana of the wraith that was his prey. Sodden and discarded newspapers decomposed apathetically in sodium-lit puddles while in the deeper shadows the eyes of animals - perhaps hunting cats, perhaps the rats that they hunted - gleamed like marbles, watching him pass._

 _Ordinarily, he would have been huddled up inside on such a night,, but his mother had decided that dealing with a relatively minor threat such as the wraith that had possessed a corpse from the city morgue - it was unknown whether the corpse, formerly one Akihiko Tamashi, was the wraith's actual body or not - and had been preying on a number of the homeless people of the city. The mundane police were still treating the deaths as a result of starvation and the cold, unforgiving weather that they had been experiencing recently, but to any magus the symptoms were childishly obvious. Something had been roaming the city and devouring the prana of those it believed would not be missed._

 _A Dead Apostle would have drained them of blood and there would have been no corpses to be found, the victims being converted into ghouls to act as the monster's familiars. A Servant would have been detected by the extensive and subtle Bounded Fields which had been erected by Semiramis over the city to detect any such presences since her visit to the Kotomine Church. That left wraiths, and if it needed to consume souls and minds so often to sustain its existence - over a dozen corpses had been found so far with the relevant symptoms - it was highly unlikely that the spirit would be especially powerful._

 _All of which led to the apprentice magus slogging through the sodden streets of the city, looking for a walking corpse with the hope of fighting and beating it._

 _His mum had an odd idea of what should be done with a Saturday evening._

 _Unfortunately, Asharu's distraction with the disgusting weather and the unfairness of not being able to take Seru out with him - the snake was grumbling ferociously about the cold and how he would never have become a familiar if he had known that it would deny him his winter hibernation - was such that he didn't notice the strengthening taste of prana in the air until cold, dead fingers had already clasped around his throat and begun to squeeze with impossible, unnatural strength._

 _Forgetting himself in his surprise, the 13 year-old scrabbled at the corpse's hands at his neck, trying to pull them away. Bits of putrefying flesh came away beneath his nails and he managed to keep it from throttling him, but before he could Reinforce his limbs to pull it away properly, now that his presence of mind had returned a little, there was a patter-splash of feet running through the puddles behind him and a shouted exclamation._

" _Das feuer,_ _brüllen!"_

 _A reddish-purple light erupted behind him, accompanied by a_ whoosh _of consumed air, and the fingers relinquished his throat with an unearthly screech. The young magus made use of the reprieve put some distance between him and the wraith-possessed cadaver. As he did so, he got a look at his savior._

 _She was a girl he would guess was about his own age, her long black hair and blue-green eyes revealed by the fallen hood of her all-encompassing rain jacket. Her right hand, which was outstretched towards the wraith and was held in a finger-gun, was outlined in a flickering aura of purplish fire, the same hue as that which was guttering out on the rotting, greyish skin of the wraith's host._

" _A magus." he muttered under his breath, deciding that until he had more information on the capabilities of this new factor, he would be cautious. Carefully, hiding his hand beneath his coat so as not to be seen by the magus-girl, he summoned Sa Imti to his hand, just in case it was needed._

 _The possessed corpse was rallying, now that the spell which had driven it off him was dissipating. It hadn't seemed to do much damage, beyond scaring the thing and possibly hurting it. It began to charge towards her, but it looked as if she was prepared for that. She brought her other hand up beside the first, holding the palms flat towards the wraith and fingers pointed to the sky._

" _Das schlie_ _ßen vogelkäfig, Echo!"_

 _A magic circle erupted into existence before her hands, unleashing a wave of reddish light. It flowed around the creature, forming a boxed enclosure. A bounded field, and performed with no more than a short aria. This magus-girl was impressive, a prodigy even, and with that came risk. If she was a true prodigy, most likely a scion of a magus family, it was unlikely that she would hesitate to eliminate a 'civilian' witness to her magecraft. On the other hand, revealing himself as a magus himself would carry risks of its own. In the end, he decided that he would have to chance it. He was confident that, if push came to shove, his magic would prove the stronger in combat._

 _She lowered her hands to her sides, looking a little tired._

" _You know, I had it handled." he told her, flaring his prana in such a way that it would be obvious to the most basic of magi. Her eyes widened slightly, before her expression was schooled into a practiced mask of casual arrogance._

" _You're a magus? What are you doing in Fuyuki? I'm the Second Owner here. It's my job to take care of this city and I can't do that if I don't know about the magi here."_

 _Asharu blinked in surprise. This was the Second Owner of Fuyuki, a girl no older than he was? What were the Mage's Association thinking?_

" _I can't very well introduce myself if I don't know who the Second Owner is, can I?" he gestured to the trapped corpse, which was now pounding at the barrier which imprisoned it, trying to escape. "What are you going to do with it, anyway? Do you want it for an experiment?"_

 _She blinked, as though the thought of what she would do with the wraith once she had trapped it hadn't occurred to her. "W-well, I was just doing my job as Second Owner, making sure that my city is safe," she said defensively, flipping a tail of hair over her shoulder. It hung, limp and damp with the persistent drizzle. "And you didn't_ look _like you were handling it."_

 _The barb stung. Being reminded of how stupid he had been, to be so caught up in being annoyed with the world as opposed to actually looking for the homicidal ghost he had been hunting wasn't pleasant, and it rankled._

" _How do you intend to get rid of it, then?" he retorted. He was rewarded with an embarrassed silence._

" _I'll tell you what, if you can hold it still while I kill it, I'll get you something warm to drink in the all night cafe up there." He pointed with his thumb towards the end of the alleyway. She considered for a moment before the prospect of respite from the cold and damp won out and she gave him a terse nod._

" _Alright then. On three." Withdrew the knife from the inside of his coat, letting the crimson light of the barrier reflect off of it._

" _One. Two._ Three!"

 _On the last word, Asharu was already moving towards the barrier, even as it collapsed inwards and formed into bands of power to restrict the corpse's movement. Dimly, he was aware of an accented German aria ("Das vogelkäfig, eine Kette werden!") as the wind rushed in his ears and the knife slipped through the dead flesh of his enemy's throat with a sickening_ schlickk _. Clotted, black-red blood painted the blade in the crimson light of the bindings._

 _Equally swiftly, he slipped out of range of any retribution that the wraith might have been able to muster, if it should break free of its bindings. He waited, panting a little, for the blade's enchantment to take effect. What was probably about half a minute, but which felt like much longer under the distinctly mocking and superior glare of the other magus, passed before anything happened._

 _And then something did. The wraith, which had been attempting futilely to squirm its way out of its bonds, suddenly stiffened and let out a keening wail. Its limbs jittered and jumped, as if the spirit's motor control was failing it. The head of the corpse rose, as if to look at the sky, then fell bonelessly limp as the blue-black-silver bruise of a creature that was the wraith flowed up and out of the mouth and eyes. An exclamation of alarm issued from the other magus, before it was strangled in her throat._

 _The spirit wouldn't escape._

 _An emerald corruption was spreading through its form, leaving a black, vaporous substance in its wake which swiftly sublimated into the air. Despite its near-formlessness, the spirit's jerky, panicked motions spoke volumes of its distress, and the same unearthly cry that had previously emerged from the corpse's throat filled the air, before its echoes faded into nothingness, along with the last remnants of the wraith._

 _There was silence, until it was broken by the female magus' voice._

" _I'm Tohsaka Rin."_

" _Sharratu Asharu."_

 _They left the corpse behind them as they quit the alleyway, their hoods pulled up against the rain._

Following that first meeting, the two young magi had formed a friendship, of sorts. Rin had been absolutely insistent that Asharu was simply a measuring stick for her to test herself against, while her son had been equally determined that the Tohsaka family heir was just a bother. Regardless of that, both of the magi met at night on a semi-regular basis to compete in their magecraft. The fact that the 'spars' often ended in both exhausted combatants sharing dinner and whichever was the less spent healing the other was meticulously ignored by both parties.

The extent of Semiramis' skill, as well as her nature, had been carefully concealed from the other magus, as despite her debatably friendly status she was still the heir of one of the founding families of the Grail War, and as such would almost certainly be chosen as one of the Masters in the coming war. The only likely end to a friendship between Masters - no matter how much the relationship's nature was denied - was tragedy. Asharu was determined though, as in everything he did, that he would not give up only on the grounds of a likelihood, and the meetings had continued.

In fact, that was the reason that her son was working so hard on his new spell. In their last bout, Rin had used a powerful anti-magic shield spell which had counteracted the relatively weak wizarding curses which Asharu usually used for offense. His answer had been to develop a spell which would bypass her shield entirely by relying upon physical force, resulting in the Hammer of Anu.

As the magus in question washed off the sweat of his exertion in the pool below, the Servant's smile faded with the thought of the merciless conflict which was on the horizon. The levels of prana within the Grail beneath Mount Miyama indicated that the summoning of the rest of the Servants was likely to take place within the next year and a half. The Grail itself was, as far as she could detect, damaged and warped from some trauma in the 3rd and 4th wars, and there was some unknown presence within it. She knew no more than that, as whenever she tried to probe deeper with her magic, some kind of compulsion would take effect and she would return to awareness minutes later with no memory of whatever she had found there.

It was likely that whatever laired within the Grail was making use of the Command Seal system to prevent her from isolating or identifying it, and that scared her. Anything powerful enough to subvert a magical device based upon one of the True Magics, capable of summoning posthuman spirits of dead heroes and of breaching a hole in the substance of reality itself to reach the the Root of All Existence was not to be trifled with, especially when one's continued existence depended upon the functioning of that device.

She could only hope that when the time came, the power of the Gardens and of her son would be enough to deal with whatever entity had hidden itself within the labyrinthine matrices of the Grail. She prayed to the dead gods of her homeland and to her divine mother that what she had taught him was enough, as with her vulnerability to the entity's manipulation, her power could not be counted upon in the coming battle.

* * *

*A nonsense word Harry uses as an 'activator'. Like Rin's 'Anfang'. Related to Hadad, a name for the Assyrian storm god.

**Literally, 'calm'. A word to close his circuits and end the ritual.

***Literally 'dominion'.

 **A/N:** And before anyone asks, no Rin is not going to be a pairing with Harry/Asharu.

It has been brought to my attention that I may have made an error in my portrayal of the difference between the ancient magic of Heroic Spirits and the modern magecraft of magi. To be perfectly honest, as I have little to go on in regards to the former, I shall probably be treating them as more similar than they probably ought to be, purely due to the fact that I have more information on magecraft.

I apologise for any inaccuracies in my portrayal of magecraft, but I think we can all agree that Nasu's system of magic is beyond complicated and is quite opaque.


	11. Chapter 11

**A/N:** And we're back again, this time with a Harry Potter-centric chapter. The plot is heating up. Treat this as an early Christmas present from me to all of you. I can't add tinsel, though, I'm afraid.

 **Disclaimer:** I do not own Harry Potter or TYPE-MOON.

* * *

The great hall of Hogwarts was dark. The enchanted candles which normally shed light over the four long dining tables - along with generous amounts of wax - were extinguished and the only light in the room was the eldritch blue flames which licked at the rim of the rough-hewn wooden goblet which sat on the teachers' table at the head of the hall. Unintelligible whispers resounded off of the stone walls as the students seated at the tables speculated quietly about who would be chosen as a champion in the Triwizard Tournament, a three-way competition of magic between Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Beauxbatons Academy of Magic and Durmstrang Institute.

From her seat halfway down the Gryffindor table, Hermione Granger was interested despite herself. Not so much in the competition itself, but the Goblet was an incredible piece of magic, near-sentient and powerful enough to retain its enchantments for more than a thousand years, if what the history books said about it was right. She shifted uncomfortably at a stab of pain in her hip, a relic of the troll attack which she had suffered in her first year. The troll had been dispatched by Professor Snape before it could kill her, but its club had caught her legs with a glancing blow and the force behind it had shattered them beyond repair. Even after spending almost a month in St. Mungo's Hospital and having her bones vanished and painfully regrown over the course of her stay, the muscles were still damaged in ways that the treatment her scholarship could afford couldn't fix, leaving her to walk with a stick for the rest of her life, or at least until a solution could be found.

Following that incident, she had been surprised that she had not heard anything about her parents pulling her from Hogwarts altogether, but when they had finally secured a permit to visit her at St. Mungo's they had explained it. Although they could remove her from the school, doing so before she had achieved the Ordinary Wizarding Levels - roughly the equivalent of muggle GCSEs - both her memories and those of her parents would be wiped of anything pertaining to magic's existence and her magic would be permanently bound, rendering her incapable of utilising any form of magic, even if she was to rediscover it at some point.

The elder Grangers had explained that although they did not want to see her in danger, they would not make a choice like that without asking her first. It had taken a great deal of thought (the troll had been terrifying and the time spent recovering had been almost as unpleasant) but eventually she had decided that running from the Wizarding World would just mean that she had been injured for nothing. She was determined that she would find a way to help people like her, without paying the exorbitant fees that the few remaining users of the necessary ritual magic would require.

Since then, the muggleborn had thrown herself into the study of magic, especially the charms and potions which were most often used in healing magic. The following years had been difficult and often lonely, as she had few friends and those she did have she did not share an especially strong bond with, but her resolve remained unchanged. Even Professor Snape with his well-known dislike of Gryffindors was forced to recognise her devotion to the study of healing and had even given her a couple of pointers towards pertinent books. When she had asked him why he was helping her, his face had turned stony and he had ground out that she reminded him of a friend of his, before turning on his heel and billowing away between the shelves of the library.

She was torn from her musings when the colour of the Goblet's flames changed, becoming an angry red. Sparks singed the air and spiraled down to extinguish themselves in the teachers' wine glasses.

"Ah, I do believe that the first champion is to be announced."

The voice of the white-bearded Headmaster of Hogwarts cut through the whispers like a knife through butter, his eyes twinkling merrily.

The Goblet flared, before a single tongue of crimson flame rose from it bearing what looked like a pair of singed paper slips. The headmaster caught them and straightened them out, holding first one and then the other in front of his long and crooked nose.

"The champions for Durmstrang Institute are… Mr. Viktor Krum and Ms. Annika Jansdöttir!"

Cheers erupted, the loudest coming from the red-robed students of Durmstrang but the rest of the hall made their approval of the Quidditch star's choice clear as well. The star in question stood up from the Slytherin table, his face set as always in a scowl, and tramped down the aisle between the tables towards the door which Dumbledore had earlier indicated that the champions should leave through, followed by the quiet form of Annika, a tall, serious-looking girl who tied her long blonde hair back into a tail.

A few minutes passed before the Goblet flared again and an expectant hush settled once more over the hall.

"The champions for Beauxbatons Academy are… Ms. Fleur Delacour and Mr. Rosaire Bernard!"

Cheering filled the air again, this time focussed around the sky-blue robes which signified the Beauxbatons students. Two stood up, one a girl who, despite her long blonde hair and height, could scarcely have been any more different to the Durmstrang champion and the other an unassuming brown-haired boy who looked more shocked than triumphant over his selection. The pair both stood, the boy stumbling a little, before making their way to the side door, the eyes of many of the males in the hall following Fleur avidly. As she walked past Hermione, even she could feel the faint was of the quarter-Veela's aura like satin and warm water against her skin..

The cheering took less time than before to fade after the two French champions left and there was a few moments of silence before the Goblet flashed red again, bearing the names of the final two champions high into the air before they fluttered down into the waiting hand of the aged headmaster. A flash of...something passed across Dumbledore's face, but the expression vanished before Hermione could identify the emotion. It was replaced with a look of confusion, but the headmaster's voice was as clear as ever as it rang out, announcing the names of the last champions.

"The champions for Hogwarts School are Ms. Katie Bell and…

"Mr. Harry Potter."

Pandemonium ensued.

* * *

The black-within-blue blast of prana seared past Asharu's ear, setting the air humming with the prana contained within it. He twisted away from the attack, sparing a thought to direct one of his curse ofuda to fire at his enemy, before another lance of energy speared up towards him. He cut the flow of energy to the enchanted shoes that kept him aloft, allowing himself to fall for the few metres that would place him beneath the attack and allow him a clear view of his opponent.

Semiramis stood on one of the balconies of the Hanging Gardens, half a hundred metres in front of him and thirty below, preparing yet another azure blast of energy to send his way.

"Excellent dodging, son, but you won't win a battle that way!" The Servant's face was alight with the excitement that only a battle of magic could bring and Asharu knew that if he could see his own face he would see the same exultant grin there as well.

Preferring to reply with his spells rather than words, the younger magus snapped out the aria for a new spell, directing it to the Qabsu which he had directed next to Semiramis while she was distracted by his now-destroyed curse ofuda's spells.

"Adad, kasu!*"

White mist condensed from the air before swiftly drawing inwards towards the clay sphere. The orb of water reached the size of a football within a second and froze solid, before erupting in a shower of razor-edged shards.

The attack did little but surprise the Servant, with the icy shrapnel skating harmlessly off of the purple barrier which flared into existence around her, but it did throw her off balance.

It was an opening which Asharu would never have the chance to take advantage of, though, as it was at that moment that a force gripped him around the chest like a burning shackle, disrupting his concentration on his follow-up spell. Panic set in a moment later, as whatever magic it was seemed to shrink inwards, disappearing inside him and settling somewhere inside his chest, where it sat like a bad case of heatburn. The worst of it, though, was that whatever it was, the magic was nothing like his mother's, an irresistible blazing immensity to the precise and surgical finesse that Semiramis favoured.

Holding up his hands in the signal that had long since been agreed to show surrender - and didn't it rankle that he's never, not _once_ , managed to get his mother to make that signal - he allowed himself to drift down and forwards towards the balcony where Semiramis stood, looking a little concerned at his sudden capitulation. He alighted, letting the ofuda embedded in his shoes lose their power and gravity reassert itself.

"What happened?"

"I felt something grab a hold of me, some kind of magic. It didn't feel like an attack, though."

The Servant raised a scalpel-sharp eyebrow.

"How do you know it wasn't me?"

"I know what your magecraft feels like and it wasn't like that."

The ancient sorceress looked troubled, her face twisting into a frown. "Hmm. Let me see."

She took a deep breath and then, in the resonant, otherworldly tones and echoing glossolalia that signified a Divine Word, she spoke.

" **Sight**."

An ethereal quality overcame the woman's eyes, their yellow irises gaining a faint radiance. A slight gasp escaped her lips before her mouth was set in a determined line and she squinted, scrutinising something which Asharu could not perceive.

A few minutes passed before she spoke again. She straightened up, her eyes losing their luminescence.

"It's a contract, not dissimilar to a geas, where the penalty is the loss of your magic core if you fail to uphold your part."

"Can it be broken?" the younger magus asked, alarmed. They didn't even know what he had to do to keep the contract from coming down on him.

"No. The contract has an element of Authority about it, an Authority of Binding. It's not a complete Authority, but it can't be broken by anything short of a True Magic or a counter Authority"

Authority was the attribute of a Divine Spirit - a god to all intents and purposes - to change the world, not through skill or power, but through having the 'right' to alter the world. Since the end of the Age of Gods, though, the only things which still had the ability to make use of an Authority were the Divine Beasts and Artefacts which remained in the world, meaning that whatever was the source of the contract, it was almost certainly an Artefact, as few Divine Beasts would have that sort of Authority.

"Fortunately, though, I was able to discern where the magic was originating from."

"Where?"

"The contract's origin is located in northern Britain, but specific location of the source is concealed behind some impressive protections. The general area is clear, though. I believe that if we want to find out more, we may have to go there in person."

The thought gave the younger magus pause. He had been born in Britain, after all, and had been brought up there, inasmuch as his life with his _relatives_ could be considered an upbringing. He'd been to a few countries since his adoption by Semiramis; Italy, the USA Australia and China among them, but he'd never gone to Britain since he'd left all those years ago.

He shook his head briefly to clear his doubts. There wasn't a great deal of choice in this. The loss of a magic core would lead to a complete inability to use wizardry, but the shock of it often lead to severe physical consequences, resulting in death in almost a third of the cases.

"How will we be going?"

Semiramis walked over to the low table where more fragile possessions had been deposited before they began their spar and picked up her state-of-the-art mobile phone, flipping it open and scrolling down the list of names before pressing the call button. It rang once before it was picked up.

"Yasumoto-san? Prepare the Challenger for takeoff as soon as possible. The destination should be Manchester Airport. How soon can it be ready?"

A garble of speech came through from the other end.

"11:00 AM tomorrow? That will give us the time to prepare and get to the airport. Thank you, Yasumoto-san." There was another bark of sound from the device. "Yes, in fact. Could you please arrange appropriate accommodation for myself and Asharu there and inform the board members that I won't be able to meet with them in person later today, but that I shall be available tomorrow. Thank you." The Servant hung up.

"How much should we bring?" asked Asharu. Semiramis paused in thought for a moment, then replied.

"Ask the servants to bring the long-term luggage, as well as the portable workshop. We may be working at this a while, and we shall require all the advantages we can bring to the table if we are dealing with a Divine Artefact. I shan't be able to accompany you, for fear of leaving the Gardens open to attacks, but I can send a homunculus familiar so that I can still help. Make sure that you bring whatever you'll need for magic tools and for your studies."

She called up another number on the phone and once again it was promptly answered.

"Ishimoto-san? Ah, excellent. I'm afraid that something has come up, meaning that Asharu will not be able to attend the cram school for a while. I'm not sure how long it will last, but rest assured that I'll make sure he's keeping up with his studies."

Garble garble.

"No, he's not injured. It's something of a family matter….. Yes, thank you. If you could, that would be excellent. We'll still only be paying for the actual time of tuition, yes?... Good. I'll talk to you again. Goodbye."

* * *

In his office at Hogwarts, Albus Wulfric Percival Brian Dumbledore was waiting on an owl. The Order of the Phoenix, its ranks swelled in the years since he had last called them together, were out in force across Britain, searching for news of Harry's return. It had been confirmed that the magic of the magic of the Goblet had settled as it had been intended to, the shackle of its contract binding Harry to compete in the Tournament. All that now remained was for the boy's location to be confirmed, and then a meeting could be set up.

He regretted that such methods were necessary, but even the most powerful seeking-spells that he had cast had yielded nothing. Eventually, he had been forced to resort to the most powerful artefact that could feasibly be utilised to find someone: the Goblet of Fire. Unfortunately, the Goblet found people solely in order to bind them; that function was an integral part of the Goblet's workings and trying to separate the enchantments which located the target from those which bound him would have been quite impossible, even if the magic hadn't been impossible to alter in the first place thanks to its Divine provenance. That was why the Goblet was used to seal important contracts and deals, after all: there was no way to escape it. The Triwizard Tournament was but one event which had been deemed important enough to Britain's overseas image that the Goblet was employed to ensure that the champions could not shame their countries by withdrawing.

Still, it was better to see a glass as half-full than half-empty, after all, and the way that events had played out certainly had its upsides. As it was, whomever was holding Harry would be forced to bring him into the public arena and the Tournament itself would make an excellent trial for the boy, both to gain some assessment of his magical ability and his temperament.

The negotiations for the use of the Goblet for such a purpose had been long and arduous, necessitating a number of concessions which had had to be made, both to the Ministry of Magic and to the governments of the other countries involved in the Triwizard Tournament. One thing that had been on his side, though, had been that his goals - for once - had the backing of the Minister himself. Cornelius Fudge was very eager indeed to have the famous Harry potter back in England and as a British citizen and was willing to go to some lengths to see that happen.

All of which ended with him reclining in his favourite red leather armchair, waiting on an owl which he had begun to suspect would never arrive and perusing a letter borne by Minister Fudge's personal owl. The letter was a virtual clone of the previous one, asking for the same advice on the same matters, the only difference being a postscript which informed him that the Ministry's agents had had no luck with discovering whether or not Harry had re-entered the country and asked with all the fervency of a schoolboy's confession to his crush whether Dumbledore would perhaps be so kind as to inform him if his contacts had discovered anything.

In truth, the wait was becoming far longer than he would have expected it to be. It had been four days since the names had come out of the Goblet and the beginnings of malcontented grumblings had begun to bubble up from the gossip-springs of the school. It was rumoured on the grapevine that Harry Potter was, in fact, dead, and that his ghost would be competing in the Tournament, or that one of the other schools had fixed it so that they each had two champions while Hogwarts only had one.

The headmaster was drawn from his pessimistic musings when the alarm on the outer wards quacked out its warning (he had long ago changed the tone from a deafening bell to the calming quacking of the ducks from the pond in the park at Godric's Hollow; the sound reminded him of better days). He glanced over at the framed parchment on which the wards would record the names of the arrivals, then looked again, before grabbing his wand from the desk and stormed out of his office, the Minister's letter floating to the ground below the ward parchment.

On it, five words had been newly inscribed in glistening, still-wet ink.

H̶a̶̶̶r̶̶̶r̶̶̶y̶̶̶ ̶̶̶P̶o̶̶̶t̶̶̶t̶̶̶e̶̶̶r̶̶̶ Asharu Sharratu

S͘҉e͜͞҉͝͠m̸̶̶̕i̡͡r̡̢̛̛a̴̵̛͟m̴̧̧į̷̛͡s͜͟͠

* * *

The corridors of Hogwarts passed Dumbledore by as he strode down towards the entrance hall, the breeze of his passing ruffling the tapestries and provoking incredulous looks from the students and teachers who quickly moved out of his way, shocked at seeing the aged wizard move at such a rate. His mind was racing just as quickly, though. How was Harry here already? Why had the parchment registered him under a different name? What was the unreadable name underneath? Was it the name of one of Harry's 'guardians' in the years that had passed between his abduction and this return? The questions buzzed around his skull like a swarm of bees, each trying to outdo the others and get an answer first.

As he paused in his dash to wait for a staircase to swing over to him, the white-bearded headmaster took a deep breath and reached inwards with his magic, calming the storm-lashed sea of his thoughts with an application of Occlumency. All that mattered now was that he make a good impression on Harry and that whoever else was there, that he retained an opening for conversation. Everything else was secondary at this point. Information could be gleaned later.

Calmer now, Dumbledore stepped onto the stairs and descended them, one step at a time as opposed to the two he had taken on the previous stairs. From there, it was half a minute's walk to the door of the entrance hall and out into the grey Scottish sunlight of a September afternoon. Most of the students were still in class, meaning that there were no crowds of children to stare at the two figures walking up the path.

One was shorter than the other and wore a sumptuous black dress with artful tracings of silver embroidery. Her hair was long and just as dark, reaching past her waist and nearly to the ground. A collar of feathers which reflect the light in patterns like oil on water framed her pale and angular face, its sharpness detracting nothing from her beauty. Pointed, elfin ears held her hair out of her face, while yellow, slitted eyes shone catlike above a sculpted nose. Beyond her statuesque looks, though, there was a presence about her, in the controlled sensuality of the way she held herself, in the magic which swirled around her and in the sheer flawlessness of her visage. It marked her as something different, something _other_ , and Dumbledore knew immediately that she deserved both respect and wariness.

The other - likely Harry, given that he was the male and only two intruders had been reported - was tall, almost six feet despite the youthful cast of his features. His hair was as black as oil and was pulled back from his head in a shoulder-length braid. The clothes that he wore were clearly muggle, a navy blue jacket worn open over a white shirt and dark jeans. His face was handsome in an aristocratic way and vivid eyes blazed emerald beneath a brow furrowed in thought. It was a little worrying that his eyes were slitted as well. Perhaps he had come into a creature inheritance or a blood adoption had been performed? Dumbledore hoped so. The kind of rituals which inflicted physical mutations were rarely pleasant or savoury things.

He had the same pointed ears as the other arrival, although they were not quite so pronounced. There was a certain presence about him too, a self-assurance that declared to the world that he knew _precisely_ who he was and what he wanted.

It was both a worrisome and deeply relieving first impression for the headmaster. On one hand, this was far from the Harry Potter which he had set out to create, all those years ago, the shy, withdrawn boy-hero for the Wizarding World to worship while he worked to dismantle whatever remained of his fallen pupil's designs on the world. On the other, Harry seemed to have had some kind of a pleasant upbringing. He was not starved, beaten nor did he look cowed in the least, so there was hope that he had had a pleasant childhood.

The pair were almost to the doors by now, and Dumbledore decided to take the initiative.

"Ah, welcome to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I am the headmaster of this august institute. May I ask why you have come here?"

"You are Albus Dumbledore?" asked the woman, her expression betraying nothing but a polite - and doubtless false - curiosity. Her voice was melodious and had a subtle accent which he couldn't' quite place. Middle eastern, perhaps?

"I am. And may I ask your names?"

"My name is Semiramis Sharratu and this is my son, Asharu. As for our business here, it concerns the magical contract which was levied upon my son without his knowledge."

Those yellow eyes were icy daggers as she spoke.

"I'm sure you will aid us however you can."

Dumbledore recovered quickly from the woman's sudden cold tone. "Of course, I would only be too happy to shed some light on the subject. Would you mind if we continued this conversation in my office?"

There was a moment's pause before she answered. Her smile had all the warmth of a pit viper.

"Of course. If you would follow me, I am always happy to help."

The journey back up through the school was far more sedate than the headmaster's trip in the opposite direction scant minutes before. As they walked, Dumbledore gave a commentary on many of the paintings, statues and rooms which they passed, relating stories and anecdotes of their histories and those of the people they depicted. Occasionally he struck up a brief conversation with one of the animated inhabitants of the paintings. It was not enough, though, to entirely distract from the eyes which followed the small group as they made their way through the halls, nor from the speculative whispers which rose like a tide behind them.

Eventually, they reached the animated gargoyle which guarded the entrance to the Headmaster's office. It sprang aside at the passowrd - "Chocolate coins" - and permitted access to the short staircase which spiraled up into the Headmaster's office. Small silvery devices clicked, hissed and tinkled from their shelves while the previous headmasters and mistresses looked curiously down from their portraits - those that weren't snoozing, that is. Dumbledore settled himself into the ornate chair behind his desk. With a wave of his wand, two comfortable armchairs popped into existence. He gestured for the pair to seat themselves.

"Now, you were speaking of a contract. I am afraid that if I am to explain the circumstances of the contract which Asharu here has found himself under. Forgive me if I digress a little.

"Thirteen years ago, as I'm sure you know, the Dark Lord Voldemort was defeated by Harry Potter, deflecting his killing curse back at him. Harry was placed on something of a pedestal by the wizarding world for his victory, gaining the title 'the Boy-Who-Lived' for his survival. He was placed with his last living relatives, as at the time his godfather, Sirius Black, was believed to have been guilty of betraying the Potters' location to the Dark Lord.

"However, nine years ago Harry disappeared from the Dursleys' house, while the Dursleys were left suffering under a powerful curse. Despite all our investigations, Harry's trail ended with a set of adoption papers in the muggle world and even our most powerful tracking spells could not locate him. Eventually, the Ministry decided to rely upon the most powerful artefact which could divine his location they had at their disposal: the Goblet of Fire.

"Unfortunately, the Goblet's purpose is not only to _locate_ but also to _bind_ its targets, and they decided that they would ensure that Harry was bound to participate in an upcoming event between this school and two others, the Triwizard Tournament. I am deeply sorry that this obligation was placed upon you. I only learned of the scheme after Harry's name had come out of the Goblet, and by then it was too late."

The woman's face was like stone.

"What does this tournament entail?"

"Well, traditionally the Tournament had three champions, one from each school, who compete in three tasks. This year, though, it was decided that each school would have a pair of champions. The prize at the end of the Tournament is 1000 golden galleons and a place in the records of its winners - for you, of course, there is release from the contract of the Goblet.

"As for the tasks themselves, they are the reason that the Tournament was discontinued some centuries ago. Traditionally, the tasks were made to be extremely dangerous, so as to be a spectacle for the audience."

"What do you mean by 'extremely dangerous'?" asked Harry. There was something in his eyes; perhaps excitement? Well, boys would be boys, he supposed, but being excited at the prospect of 'extreme danger' was abnormal and bore watching.

"An example of a past Task - the one which caused the Tournament to be banned in 1792, in fact - would be pitting the Champions against a cockatrice and tasking them to obtain its venom. I have it on good authority that the tasks have been made less deadly this time around, but I would caution you to train hard, as they will by no means be easy. I would be more than pleased to help in teaching you."

"Is there anything else which we should know?" asked Semiramis, ignoring the headmaster's offer.

"There is one thing. It is customary for the Triwizard Champions to remain at the hosting school for the duration of the Tournament, once they have arrived. That was also made a part of the contract without my knowledge. The furthest that the contract will permit is going to the village of Hogsmeade, on the other side of the lake, or the outskirts of the castle grounds. The only exception is if one of the tasks requires that the champions leave the area, I am afraid.

"There are plenty of guest rooms in the castle, of course, but as you will have to remain for most of the year anyway, may I suggest that you enrol here for that year? You would not be charged, of course, considering the circumstances, and you would have no need to employ separate tutors. If one is confined to a school, after all, there is always learning to be done."

The woman, Semiramis, stood, Harry following suit. "Thank you for the offer, but neither I nor Asharu practice wand-based magic."

Now that was curious. There were a number of nations around the world who eschewed the wand-magic which had become popular with the Romans and had spread through the expansion of their empire, but it narrowed down the locations where Harry had been living considerably. It was a pity that there would be little chance of getting a feel for Harry's personality via the Sorting Hat, but he dared not push the idea of a true Hogwarts education further, for fear of alienating them.

"Well, it's never too late to learn. As Asharu will have to remain around the castle, he is welcome to attend whatever classes he sees fit, provided that the teachers consent, of course."

In a quiet rush of feathers, a great grey owl alighted at the window, a Ministry-sealed letter clutched in its claws.

"Ah! I am afraid that duty calls. Tibby!"

There was a piercing _crack_ , following which a small, long-eared creature with wrinkled skin and large brown eyes appeared on the floor of the office. The other two occupants of the room started at its sudden appearance. The aged wizard's eyes noted the practiced and fluid stances that they both fell into with practiced ease before they relaxed.

The woman was a fighter, some kind of battle-mage, by the magic which flared around her, and she had taught Harry to be as well. That was worrisome. Children should not be forced into battles no matter the circumstances. It was what often kept him awake at night, the thoughts of the newly-graduated students who had fought and died against Voldemort's Death Eaters in the last war. The sort of person who would train a not-yet-14-year old in martial techniques was the sort of person to be cautious of, even besides her unknown nature.

"Hows can Tibby be helping, Headmaster Sir?" it asked.

"Could you please show my visitors to the state quarters on floor three, Tibby?"

"Of course, Headmaster Sir."

"Now, if you just follow Tibby here, she'll show you the way."

The pair turned to leave as the little creature beckoned them towards the stairway with an eagerness which somehow came off as endearing, as opposed to how irritating it would be in a human.

"Oh, one last thing, before you go. If I may ask, where were you all these years?"

They turned again, and Harry grinned. For the first time, Dumbledore noticed the way that his teeth were more pointed than, perhaps they ought to be.

"In a fortress in the sky." he answered, before walking down the staircase, leaving behind a mystified Headmaster whose passive legilimency had revealed no word of a lie.

* * *

*Cold

 **A/N:** As the clever ones among you may deduce, the Triwizard Tournament is not going to follow canon exactly, as I personally find the tasks really quite dull and uninspired. So you'll get to experience a whole new tournament! Rejoice!

Note that in the latter parts of this chapter and for the time being, Dumbledore refers to Asharu as Harry, as that is the name which he associates with him.


	12. Chapter 12

**A/N:** Before anything else, I would like to say something. To all of you reading my story, I am so grateful to all of you. All of your reviews, favourites and follows give me a little more to go on towards my dream of being a well-known and published author. I would just like to thank all of you who read this, and especially the people who have left me reviews pointing out things which could be improved or polished, for helping me out. I take my hat off to you.

I'm sorry for the long wait since the last chapter. This one was quite difficult to get out, on top of Christmas and its aftermath.

 **Disclaimer:** I do not own the Harry Potter franchise, nor do I own TYPE-MOON or the Nasuverse.

* * *

The sigil faded from a glowing emerald to black as Asharu let the magic slip away, the darkly-inked symbol being the last of the six which anchored the Bounded Field to the state quarters. The field should forewarn him of intruders and was connected to the mana-rich atmosphere of the castle, giving it more than enough power to repel all but the strongest of interlopers.

Compared to the protections he had erected on his own workshop, back in Fuyuki, this was a crude measure but it would suffice until more refined barriers could be erected. It hadn't helped, either, that there was something about the prana in the castle which seemed to passively reject his own, making it difficult to apply the Bounded Field.

Semiramis' homunculus-puppet had been placed in the storage compartment of his space-expanded suitcase the day before, after the meeting with the Headmaster, but not before a long conversation had been had behind anti-eavesdropping barriers about their current situation.

Dumbledore had quite clearly been omitting information from what he had told them, but the only part which had been an outright lie had been when he had said that he knew nothing of the contract before it was enacted. There was a likely motivation for the British wizards wanting him back - his fame and usefulness as a political symbol - but the headmaster did not seem like the sort of person to be overly concerned with that sort of thing. For one, he had a vast amount of political capital of his own and held two important positions in the government - Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards and Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot - in addition to being the headmaster of the most prominent English magical school. It was possible that he simply wanted to secure his power, but Semiramis had told him that she felt there was something more going on, something deeper than political greed.

Finding out what, exactly, would be a priority while he was stuck here, along with training, both for this Triwizard Tournament - and why did they keep that name anyway, with six champions? - and for the Grail War that would come hard on its heels.

He knew his mother well enough to know that she was furious at this turn of events, and that the perpetrators would be lucky to escape with the clothes on their backs. Semiramis never acted in haste, though, always taking time to consider, to plan and to measure her response. He remembered what had happened when the yakuza had kidnapped him back when he was seven, and he doubted that his mother would be much more merciful this time around. Perhaps it was a sign of how dissonant his morals were with 'modern' morality, but Asharu found himself rather anticipating the fate that was awaiting the ones who had bound him here.

Still, if he was going to be living in and around Hogwarts for the foreseeable future, the first thing to do ought to be getting a proper sense of the castle and the people there. Leaving the magic circle behind and clearing up the pigment and ink brush he had used to inscribe it - he hadn't yet gotten the hang of burning a magic circle onto a surface with only prana yet - he went to leave, intending to go up to one of the towers first, to get a general idea of the layout.

§Where do you think you're going?§

The hissing voice of his familiar interrupted Asharu's thoughts just as he was turning the handle to exit the room.

§I am going to investigate the castle. Do you want to come with me?§ he replied, turning his head to look at where the snake was visible on top of the canopy of the four-poster bed, sunning himself in the light from the windows.

§Go explore the cold-stone-nest.§ said Seru, tongue flickering at the mote of dust which floated in the air. §Bring back some of the small-furred-running-prey. I need to eat.§

Shaking his head at the familiar's demand and making a mental note to get some mice for him, Asharu entered the portrait-lined corridor outside. As he descended the tower, first one, then a pair and then more and more black-robed students appeared, holding book bags and bundles of papers. Whispers followed him, almost tangible in their quantity.

"Who's that? What's he wearing?"

"I don't know. Do you think he's a vampire or something? Look at his _eyes_."

Countless variations on the theme attended his heels as he made his way around the school. The dimensions were strange, here. Rooms were larger than their hallways ought to allow and the stairways shifted in the abyssal wells which contained them, the great columns of empty air stretching up out of sight and down to stone floors, a hundred metres below.

The magical architecture of the castle was just as eccentrically magnificent. Even to Asharu's most passive prana senses, the building sang out its magic to any who cared to listen. If he had to describe it in terms of the traditional five senses - always a difficult task, what with the inherently transcendental nature of prana and magic in general making it so that when one sensed it, the information generally registered as mismatched input to all senses,except in those who were truly excellent at prana-sensing - he would have had to say that it was like pillars of many-coloured light stretching up through the stones and playing against the ceilings like an aurora, accompanied by the taste of dust and iron. It was awe-inspiring, almost humbling, to be in the presence of such immense and powerful enchantments and yet there was something… else. A regularity throughout all of the eclectic magics of the castle, like an ever-present golden warmth or a vast heartbeat. It was both comforting and a little unnerving at once. The magus idly pondered whether the castle perhaps had perhaps birthed some kind of spirit over its lifetime.

The morning was spent idly for Asharu, flitting from classroom to classroom. The subjects were interesting - for the most part, History of Magic had been unutterably dull for the scant minutes that he had listened in and he could entirely understand why the majority of the room was snoring gently - but the green-eyed wizard was quite surprised at how few teachers there were. Only one teacher per subject for a school of almost three hundred students, and even then the subject choice was severely constrained.

Yes the disciplines of magic which wand-users generally employed were well-represented, but the magical practices of other countries seemed to have little to no representation while the entirety of the mundane world was gathered under the banner of 'Muggle Studies'. That class had had him torn between laughter and pity as the teacher strutted back and forth at the front of a classroom full of 15 year olds avidly listen to her pontificate on how telephones used anbaric currents to transform voice into vibrations in a wire. They were so far in error that it was barely even amusing anymore, and he wondered how it was possible for a society to be so utterly disconnected from their literal neighbours.

He had shaken his head and left that particular classroom with little fanfare, finally heading down to the kitchens - located via a simple divination spell he had worked with a drop of wet ink on the stone floor and a quick incantation - to see if he could find something resembling a lunch, hopefully a little lighter than the steak and gravy that had been dinner last night, delivered to him and his mother by the same house-elf as had directed them there.

Finding the kitchen had been easy, opening it far less so. It had taken almost twenty minutes of carefully inspecting the magical structure of the fruit-bowl painting that concealed the entrance to figure out that the pear had to be _tickled,_ of all things, to open the door. The house-elves inside had been only too happy to accommodate his requests and had even promised to bring a couple of mice up to Seru.

It was after his kitchen-raid, as the sun got about as close to overhead as it ever did in Scottish September, that Asharu began making his way downwards towards the dungeons of the castle, as he head overheard a number of students talking about the Potions classroom being down there. He was curious as to whether the western wizards' potions were at all similar to the alchemy which his mother had taught him or Japanese _suiyaku_ *.

The air was cold and clammy as the green-eyed magus descended below ground. The uneven stone of the walls was damp to the touch. The corridors were quiet, the only sounds the distant chatter of voices from the halls above and the steady tread of his own feet on the paving slabs of the floor.

It came as quite the surprise, then, when as he was turning a corner, Asharu caught a momentary glimpse of a brown-haired girl haring her way down the passage, before the two met abruptly and tumbled to the floor in a tangled mess of robes, limbs and a heavy book bag.

"Aarrgh! Sorry, sorry." she exclaimed, beginning to extrictate herself and climb to her feet again. "Are you alright?" Having regained her feet, the girl extended a hand own to him, a silent offer to help him up.

"Fine, thank you," replied Asharu, accepting the hand and being pulled to his feet with surprising strength. "Why were you running anyway?"

"I'm on my way to Snape's class and he'll gut me if I'm late." She paused and shot him a measuring look. "Why are you here anyway? I saw you wandering around earlier, but you're not wearing Hogwarts robes. Are those muggle clothes?"

"I'm just looking around. I'll be hanging around the school for a while yet, so I thought I'd have a look." Seeing the suspicious look she threw him, he quickly changed the subject. "Weren't you on your way to a class?"

"Oh, yeah." she gathered up the books which had spilled out of their bag and slung it back over her shoulder. "Well, see you!"

"I was on my way to the potions classroom as well. I don't suppose you could show me the way, could you. As I say, I'm new here, so I could do with someone to show me around." He omitted to mention that he could have easily located the classroom himself through the same method of divination that he had used to find the kitchens.

"Sure. I'm Katie, by the way. Katie Bell." So this was the other champion in the Tournament? It would behoove him to gather some information on her, at the least.

"Sharratu Asharu. Oh, no, wait, you do things the other way around, don't you? Asharu is my first name."

She gave him an odd look but seemed to shake it off before striking off down the corridor at a brisk pace.

It was little more than a minute later when the pair arrived at a heavy oak door through which the last of a class of black-robed students were filing. Katie let out a sigh of relief as she slipped through the door behind them. The room was split into two, the front half filled with evenly-spaced desks, while behind them there were two dozen or so cauldrons suspended over flickering flames. The students were each taking their places at one or another of the desks, extracting quills, books, ink and sheaves of parchment from their bags.

"Ah, I am glad that you saw fit to join us, Ms. Bell," drawled a dry voice from the front of the classroom. There, behind a heavy desk, stood a tall man with pale skin made almost yellow by the shifting light in the room. His hair was as dark as his eyes, which shone like polished onyx above a hooked nose.

"Um, yes, sir."

"And we have a visitor today, as well. As Ms. Bell seems to be the last here without a partner, would you please find a seat next to her, Mr. Potter. I presume that you are at least adequately educated in the art of potion-brewing?"

A stir passed through the classroom, heads swivelling and the whispers which had already been present since his appearance in the room multiplied. Inwardly, Asharu was furious. He had intended for his identity to remain unknown to the general student body until at least the first Task of the Tournament, with the possible exception of the other Champion, in case they needed to discuss strategy. Still, there was no use in crying over spilt milk. The best he could do now would be to ride it out.

"Yes, thank you professor. Although the form of potion-making that I learned was quite different to yours." As he said this, Asharu made his way over to the desk next to Katie and sat, studiously ignoring the smouldering glare she was directing at him.

"Which discipline did you learn?" inquired the potion master, an edge of curiosity making it into his voice.

" _Suiyaku_ , the Japanese style of brewing. I am a third-degree _Gokon.**_ "

"Hmm. Better than many, then. Do you know how to compensate for not using stabilising seals on the brewing vessel and how to use non-aqueous bases?"

"The lack of stabilising seals can be countered by the use of exacting timing and ingredients of less than optimal potency, while non-aqueous bases require the brewer to consider the magical alignment and qualities in relation to the desired potion."

"Well, it seems that there will be at least one component brewer in my class today." He turned away, addressing the class as a whole. His voice, although quiet, fell with the force of a hammerblow on the chattering teens, smothering their conversation to near-silence.

"Today we shall be brewing the Clarity's Breath potion. As those of you who remember last lesson - few indeed, I suspect - will recall, Clarity's Breath is a brew belonging to the classification of 'essences' and is intended to be utilised via the inhalation of its vapours, which induce clarity and speed of thought. If drunk, the potion will cause the imbiber to suffer a sensory overload, inflicting mental damage which is difficult to reverse even for a skilled Legilimens. Thus, it would behoove you to do your best to _avoid_ drinking it.

"In addition, I would suggest that you refrain from inhaling the fumes between the sixth and seventh steps of its preparation, as their effects will make it even more likely than usual for one of you dunderheads to bungle the making of the brew." He waved his wand at the blackboard at the front of the class and a list of instructions appeared. "You have one and a half hours. Begin."

As soon as Snape had averted his gaze, going to hover like a pall of ill-omen over one of the other tables, Katie gave Asharu a sharp jab in the arm.

"What was that for?"

" _That_ was for not telling me that you're Harry Potter," she whispered furiously.

"Well I told you the truth. I don't go by Harry Potter anymore. I was adopted."

"That's no excuse. Now, go and get the ingredients. I'll need to go over the recipe again, and if you're good enough at potions that you can impress _Snape_ of all people, then you'll be fine."

The lesson passed swiftly for the green-eyed magus as he lost himself in the motions of brewing the potion and in quiet conversation with Katie, once she had forgiven him for his deception. It turned out that Katie Bell's anger was quick to arise and quick to subside.

He could tell that she was desperate to ask him about what had happened after his disappearance, but thankfully managed to contain her curiosity, only asking where he had learned to be so good at potions. He had replied that he had had excellent tutors and that his mother was a master brewer as well. Besides potions, the conversation had wandered to the upcoming Tasks in the tournament, and that neither of them had any idea what the first one would be, barring the information which katie had been given that each school's two champions would be working together. Ideas were tossed back and forth and by the time that Snape called the class to bring him samples of their potions a meeting had been planned in the library to research previous Tasks. Privately, Asharu had resolved that he would have to make a few of his origami spy-familiars and set them to eavesdrop on the organisers of the Tournament in hopes of getting some idea of what the first Task would entail.

As the class filed out of the dungeons, the magus and the witch lagged behind, still talking, until a dark-skinned girl who was introduced as Angelina Johnson pulled Katie away, citing quidditch practice. Asharu wandered back up to his rooms in the Astronomy Tower. Seru would be getting grumpy, by now.

* * *

The sun had sunk below the horizon more than an hour before Severus Snape had finished the day's paperwork to a sufficient degree that he could answer the Headmaster's 'invitation' to come and talk to him in his office. The dour man sighed inwardly. There was no way that he would have a chance to work on some real potioneering that night. He doubted that he would have any real chance to work on his current thesis, _Personalisation of Wolfsbane for Improved Effect,_ before the weekend. It would be hard enough to get the paper through the academic community if he got it out before the Purebloods began the Yule social season. At the current rate, though, he would miss that chance and would have to wait for the summer season.

Setting down his quill - flat, not in the inkpot like those imbeciles who he had to teach - Snape stood and left his office. The walk up to stand in front of the gargoyle which guarded the entrance to the Headmaster's office was familiar to the potions professor. More familiar than he wished he was, if he was honest for himself. For all that the Headmaster had saved him from a lifetime in Azkaban and was always working to do the best he could for the world (in his eyes, at least), the man was far from the lily-white persona he displayed to the public at large.

"Jelly babies," he snarled at the stone guardian, prompting the construct to leap jauntily aside, revealing the staircase behind. Deciding that putting off the inevitable would serve no purpose, Snape started up the steps.

"Ah, Severus. Come in." The voice echoed through the door and once again Snape inwardly laughed at the old schemer. The elder wizard knew perfectly well that he knew of the enchantments on the door, but Dumbledore had always liked to present the appearance of omniscience. He opened the door and strode in.

"How were your classes today?"

The old goat was sat behind his desk and had a quill to a near-full piece of parchment. From the seal sitting ready next to it, he would hazard a guess that it was a letter to someone important, likely either a Pureblood or a high-ranked Ministry employee. To most others, the headmaster would have been the picture of a diligent worker, just looking for a conversation. To Snape's more jaundiced and cynical eyes, aided by long familiarity, the falseness of the facade was all too obvious. Still, if the headmaster wanted to play, he might as well.

"As good as could be expected, given the idiots who make up the majority of my classes."

"Only the majority? Why, Severus, you're mellowing out."

The black-haired wizard gritted his teeth at the elder's teasing tone. It would be better to distract him.

"The majority, I said. For the most part, they're still the same dunderheads as ever. Mr. Potter is an exception, however."

The teasing smile on Dumbledore's face vanished like a fox down a rabbithole.

"What did you think of him?" he asked in a serious voice.

Snape paused in thought for a moment. "He is… different to how I thought he would be. I admit that I expected him to be an imitation of his father, but I think that there is more of his mother in him than his father and, I suspect, more of his adoptive parent than Lily. He is skilled and precise, enough to perfectly brew the Clarity's Breath while having to compensate for differences between the system he has learned and the methods which we use."

"What system has he learned, then?"

"The Japanese one. They rely on magically charged seals to stabilise the brews, allowing them to focus on making sure that the ingredients blend properly."

"Japanese? His adoptive mother didn't look Asian. Perhaps a Japanese tutor, then?"

Snape remained silent, keeping his opinions to himself.

"How did he interact with the others in the class?"

"He seems to have struck up a friendship with Ms. Bell. I do not know whether that is simply over the Tournament or otherwise."

"Do you think that they met by chance or did he seek her out?"

"They entered the classroom together." Snape raised an eyebrow with meticulous irony. "Do you simply wish to interrogate me about Mr. Potter's social life."

"He goes by Asharu Sharratu since his adoption, apparently. Have you seen anything of his guardian? According to the wards, she has not left the grounds."

"No, I have not. What does she look like?"

Dumbledore picked up his wand from the desk and gave it a negligent flick. Purplish smoke spiralled out of the tip and gathered into a cloud between Snape and the desk, swirling in a column for a moment before stilling and taking on the colours and shape of a woman of middling height with floor-length black hair. Her eyes were amber and slitted while her pointed ears projected a number of inches from beneath her tresses. A frilled black dress with red highlights clung to her figure and cascading in ripples of midnight fabric to the floor.

Snape appraised the illusion before shaking his head. "I believe that I would have remembered such a unique individual. Now, may I go? I have a number of time-sensitive brews simmering at the moment."

"Of course, my boy," said Dumbledore with a genial smile, all hint of seriousness vanished behind his grandfatherly mask, "I'm sorry for keeping you."

The dour professor nodded sharply - the closest he would get to a bow - and turned on his heel, leaving Dumbledore to ponder tiredly over his letter.

* * *

While the moon rose higher in the sky and teachers emerged from their offices to patrol the hallways, Asharu continued his exploration of the castle. The magic there was simply _incredible_ , even simply 'looking' at the surface-level, but he was sure that there was something else, beneath the profusion of fortification-magic imbued into the stones and the obvious manifestations like the moving staircases and the doors-which-pretended-not-to-be. He had already discovered a number of fascinating enchantments, from dormant animation-spells on the suits of armour and the stone statues which adorned the walls to a classroom which, if you wrote the name of the hallway on the little blackboard on the back of the door, would move around to open on to that corridor.

The way that the castle seemed to violate the laws of space and geometry even more casually than wizards normally did - at least space-expanded charms had limitations and tended to be static. It bordered on a Marble Phantasm, and if such a Mystery could be replicated, either through magecraft or wizardry, it would be an incredible accomplishment. Maybe even enough to equal something like the Gardens of Babylon. He doubted that it would be that easy - the Gardens were a Noble Phantasm after all - but still, the castle was meant to be built by wizards. Surely there must be a way to imitate it somehow.

As the black-haired magus walked along yet another stone hallway (this particular one being on ground level, according to what eh could see out of the windows, despite the fact that he had climbed upwards from the second floor to get there) his eyes were drawn to an alcove that might have been unassuming, were it not for the fact that, to his magical senses, the wall was splashed with hues of swirling black-gold around the faint outline of the snake emblem which was worked into the grey stone, almost eradicated by the grind of years. A rustling reached his ears and there was iron and copper on his tongue as he focussed on the sensations.

Trusting to the talisman of concealment he had retrieved from his quarters after his identity had been revealed by the potions professor to keep him from the notice of wandering professors, Asharu ducked into the recess and trailed a finger over the length of the carving. He noted the phantom sensation of liquid stickiness he felt from the thing's magic. On some unknown impulse, he let his vocal chords undergo that odd _switch_ to the snake-tongue - parseltongue, they called it here, for reasons he doubted he would ever know - and spoke to it.

§Open.§

It was a shot in the dark, fuelled by gut instinct and very little else, and Asharu was quite shocked when instead of remaining solid and unmoved the wall slid backwards with a grinding sound then sideways into the walls. Where the alcove had been, there was now the entrance to a narrow set of stairs leading down into darkness. The same black-gold power swirled in the void below.

Taking a moment to conjure a flickering light in his palm - a minor fire-aligned spell which any magus worth his salt ought to be able to manage - Asharu put a foot on the topmost step and began his descent.

As he made his way down into the blackness, the curious magus examined the power below. It seemed to permeate the air down here, thin like a faint mist at first, but stronger as he descended. He noticed the beginnings of faint patterns on the walls, row upon row of vertical lines at first, but gaining definition and detail as he continued on. First they gained a spray of branching lines at the top end, then 'leaves' further down and with a start Asharu realised that they were corn, row upon row of crops lining the walls of the passageway. In the flickering light, it seemed almost as if they moved, waving in an unfelt breeze.

The floor glistened darkly at the magus' feet, slick with some unknown liquid. He could not tell if it was water or something else, with the dim illumination and the dark colour of the stone. The air was heavy with the smell of iron and copper. Wariness rose within Asharu, warring with his curiosity even as he continued on down the stairway. Before him, in the pool of light cast by the flame in his hand, he could see the bottom of the stairs where they flattened out into a dirt floor, running with little pools and streams of a black liquid. As he descended the last step, the magic in the air shivered, seas of gold swaying gently. For a moment, Asharu could see a vaulted ceiling, stone serpents coiled around grey pillars, and then it was gone.

The world bent and impossibility unfolded.

* * *

*Potions.

**Brewer, literally 'concocter'.

 **A/N:** Mwahahaha! I'm evil!

Please note that I've tweaked Katie's age in this. She's in sixth year, but due to an early birthday is seventeen at the time of the Goblet being used.

\- Important notes relating to changes from the canon Harry Potter timeline due to the differences with the Chamber:

\- Myrtle was not killed by the basilisk. She committed suicide and became a ghost, haunting the bathroom until she was twisted into a vengeful spirit - a spectre - by her misery and was banished.

\- Hagrid was still expelled, but it was for possession of an XXXXX class dangerous magical beast - Aragog - on a school campus.

\- Ginny was never possessed by the diary as, due to Tom Riddle never bringing the basilisk out into the school, Tom never left instructions to give the diary to a schoolchild to Lucius.

\- Voldemort knows of the Chamber and its contents but considered the risk of dealing with it to great to outweigh the possible rewards.

\- Dumbledore retained more political capital than in canon, what with not being booted from Hogwarts, but used most of that up in persuading the Ministry to let him use the Goblet to find Harry


	13. Chapter 13

**A/N:** And now, the resolution of the Most Evil Cliffhanger I left you with last chapter (and yes, the capitalizations were deliberate).

 **Disclaimer:** I do not own Harry Potter or the Nasuverse.

* * *

The walls fell away and the magus stood beneath a starless sky as black as pitch amid an endless sea of ripe grain, stretching out farther than the eye could see. There was no perceptible source of light but everything could be seen in perfect clarity, standing stark and shadowless. The plain was featureless, save for a mound in front of him, rising from the plain. Its crest was adorned with a golden monolith, twice as tall as a man. Around the crest of the small hill were twelve stones, half as tall as the central one and as dark as it was radiant.

A cold fear settled deep in Asharu's stomach, twisting into a vicious knot. This was not simply an imitation of a Marble Phantasm. It _was_ one. He could feel the thrumming power and _reality_ of it, having none of the constant degradation and reconstitution that was inherent to the precarious existence of a Reality Marble. If this was a true Marble Phantasm, and one powerful enough to so completely overwrite the World, its creator must be truly powerful. Elementals and True Ancestors were the only beings with the ability to create a Marble Phantasm and either were immeasurably more powerful than he. The magus' magic circuits burned as they were opened, letting mana flood in in preparation for whatever might come.

A voice sounded over the gentle rustle of the grain, hissed and sibilant in the tongue of snakes.

§Yessss. I knew that I could smell something on you. You are not like those man-worms, are you? Step into my temple, young one.§

The voice was heavy with authority. There was no mistaking its words for anything but a command. Hoping for the best, Asharu began to ascend the hill, assuming that the 'temple' whatever-it-was spoke of was the black henge.

The only warning that the young magus got was a slight rustle of the corn.

From inside the circle, swiftly uncoiling from where it had been lying concealed by the stones and chest-high grain reared a vast, sinuous shape, a serpent of impossible proportions. The head alone was almost half as long as he was tall, split by a maw of knife-like fangs, and the body was nearly as thick. The third of its body that loomed over him was itself at least three times as tall as the young wizard who stumbled back, instinctively empowering the protective _ofuda_ he kept on him at all times, for all that he knew that even the _ten no tate*_ would do little against whatever this thing was.

It did not look healthy, though.

Its scales might once have been greenish, but were stained black by the unidentifiable ichor which oozed sluggishly out from between them. At the base of its head and continuing down its neck, bony, black-stained spikes protruded from its body, spearing through the flesh and forming a skeletal parody of a cobra's hood or, perhaps, a halo. Its breast was hollowed-out and concave, suggesting that perhaps its ribs had been plundered to form its 'crown'.

The thing's head was distorted, empty hollows on the sides that might once have been eyes were filled with flesh and scales, while its forehead was unnaturally flat and bore a single, baleful yellow eye. There was no white, only a golden iris which shone like the corona of the sun, surrounding the eclipse that was its dead black pupil. Its movements were strange, as if it was being moved not by muscles within but by some outside force, like a great, grotesque puppet.

Perhaps worse than its appearance, though, was the smell that filled the air. It smelled like something rotten and long-dead, sick and diseased. Furthermore, the mana around the thing swirled with thrumming power, its strength only exceeded by its malevolence. It felt like oil and glass shards scraping against his skin, and rand with the sound of a band of smashed trumpets, a remnant of a once-grand refrain twisted into hideousness.

It spoke again, its jaw moving in a parody of the subtle motions of parseltongue. Its words seemed to vomit themselves into existence independent of flesh or tongue.

§You are come to my prison of these last thousand years, half-breed, as I called you. I scented your nature on the air, and for one such as myself, a human with blood of the Divine might provide some amusement. So, tell me half-breed, what do you call yourself?§

Asharu swallowed before answering. It was the wrong thing to do.

§ **Tell me your name, flesh-worm!** §

§I-I am Asharu, son of Semiramis, daughter of Derketo,§ answered, the young magus hastily, trying not to shiver at the power and fury in the thing's words.

The head of the thing lowered, its cyclopean eye rolling in its skull as it examined him from different angles. It seemed to have calmed, but Asharu nonetheless remained still, hoping not to provoke it again. §A curious one indeed.§

The serpent's mouth flopped open in what might, on a more human visage, have been a grotesque smile. §I was once known as Crom Cruach to the men of the Green Isle to the west of this benighted place, god of the harvest, the growing and the blood that made the fields fertile. I was the sacrifice and its bounty, the death and the birth.§

The newly-named Crom's head raised up once again, swaying high in the air and a manic note entered it - his? - voice.

§I was a god, and then they came, killing my followers. They came in the winter, when I slumbered within the earth and **stole** **my humans! Stole them with the iron and the fire and the spears and the swords! They smashed** _ **my**_ **temple, broke** _ **my**_ **stones and took** _ **my**_ **gold! Burned my blood-fields, and when I woke, there were no songs for me, no new blood on the ground, no shoots to welcome my coming. And I was weak, so weak that their new gods took me and cast me away!** §

The great sun-eye flashed down to hold Asharu in its rictus stare. The boy's skin felt scorched under that gaze, stinging like a thousand needles. He was silent, though. There was no telling what this being - a former Divine Spirit fallen to the level of an Elemental, it sounded like - would do to him if he interrupted it.

§And I wandered, so weak, and came to this place, before the four built this tomb of stone and voices. I slept, and tried to regain my strength, and while I slept, I was once again set upon, **bound, imprisoned, shackled while they built their stone-pile from** _ **my**_ **power and** _ **my**_ **strength!** §

The possessed serpent swayed, its words descending into a riot of unintelligible sounds. The grains scratched against the bare skin of Asharu's hands and he realised abruptly that they left thin lacerations there, paper-thin lines of red scored by glass-sharp leaves. Raising his hands above the reach of the plants and trusting to his sturdy clothes to keep the rest of him from harm, he waited until the thing's mutterings had trailed off entirely before speaking.

§Great Crom Cruach, what do you wish of me?§

It turned sharply to regard him, as though it had forgotten his presence there and he had surprised it by speaking.

§I wish only to speak with another,§ it replied, far softer than before; §My imprisonment has been long, dark and silent. I felt the Divinity within you, and wondered whether you were like myself. I see now that you are but a half-breed, but you may nonetheless provide some entertainment. I felt the Grail of Burning Chains ignite within my walls, and even now I scent its shackle on your soul. Tell me of how such a thing has come to be.§

§You know of the Goblet of Fire, honoured spirit?§ The magus felt like he was laying it on a little heavy, but the elemental seemed to be accepting of what he said, if not overly happy-looking. If it had indeed been trapped down here for the millennium since the school's founding, perhaps its mind had not survived as well as its power seemed to have.

§The great Cup of Choosing, regalia of Creidhne the Brazier, of the young Tuatha de Danann. I once spoke with him, when Nuada of the Silver Hand called the gods of the Green Isle to banquet at the silver fortress of Tir na n'Og. The moon was low, and I duelled Lugh himself, my fangs and Gae Assail...§ The spirit seemed lost in memories, staring off into the distance as if to relive that ancient battle. Shadows of a vast serpent and a spear-wielding warrior danced across the cornfields, wraiths borne on immaterial winds. It was almost a minute before he focussed once again on the black-haired wizard in his shadow.

§I could break its geas, you know. Bring me the Grail, and I will consume it and free you.§

The offer came as a surprise, and Asharu had to restrain himself from immediately considering the difficulties with retrieving the Goblet from the keeping of the Ministry. Something that his mother had drilled into his head years ago was that making a deal where magecraft, magic or spirits were involved was a dangerous affair at best, and suicidally foolish at worst. There was no such thing as a free lunch.

§If I may ask, great Crom Cruach, why would you desire such an artefact?§

The possessing elemental paused, as if considering something, before speaking again.

§The accursed bonds which keep me trapped use my own self as their power source. I am bound within myself. The Goblet is a fragment of a Divine Spirit, one which is free, unlike myself. Its power would allow me to break free of my bonds that much faster. No mortal magic can last forever, and even Salazar's bones could hold me for another century, had I the power of the Grail of Burning Chains.§

§Salazar Slytherin?§ Asharu was surprised. All the texts he had read had referred to Slytherin as a vile figure, the Judas of the Four Founders.

A quiet susurration emerged from the great serpent, growing to a hissing roar. With a start, Asharu realised that Crom was laughing.

§You are surprised? That was my final revenge on Salazar, the one who first devised the plot to entrap me and who later sacrificed his very soul so that his descendants would have no need to bind themselves to the castle as he did. I have whispered in the minds of every man, woman and child who has dwelt within my walls **and I have made his memory** _ **dirt**_ **.** **He, whose cunning overcame even myself has been made the patron of causes which he would have despised!** **He, who sacrificed himself for his friends and his children was remembered by them as their betrayer!** **Thus is the vengeance of Crom Cruach! Even the King of Serpents which was set to guard me was subverted and made my host. Salazar may be beyond my reach, but I shall not rest until all his works are dust and bone!** §

The possessed serpent had been becoming ever more animated as it spoke, until finally it was whipping from side to side, ranting at nonexistent figures and the starless heavens above. Asharu took the time to consider his options with regards to Crom's proposal, making use of the split attention that all magi learned early to listen to the spirit's tirade at the same time and taking care to seem attentive, lest he offend the creature.

Despite the temptation of freedom, giving the Goblet to the spirit without knowing anything else about the background or context than what it was willing to reveal would be the height of foolishness. On the other hand, simply refusing outright might anger it enough to attack him, and the magus was not so prideful that he could not admit that such an enemy was far beyond him. Delaying tactics, then. The great serpent calmed over the course of a few minutes, before Asharu felt that it was safe to speak again.

§Oh great Crom Cruach, I ask that you give me time to consider your most generous offer.§

§Ssssss… Very well. Leave, now, and bring me your answer when I call you again.§

As it spoke, the endless rows of corn faded, becoming first indistinct and then transparent, as if they were made of glass. The rustle of the stalks and their pressure against his legs faded away, becoming like whispers on the breeze and the faint touch of air. Through and beyond the fading world, grey stone serpents stood like petrified trees, their many branching heads butted against the ceiling. The basilisk's corpse fell to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut, a thunderous crash marking the impact, but it could do nothing to draw Asharu's eyes from the sight at the far end of the hall.

A skeleton sat, enthroned upon an ornate chair. Its bones were bare of any flesh, but green with mould and algae. Hanging from its shoulders were scraps of what was perhaps once a magnificent robe, now rotted and near-vanished with time. Around the brow, a circlet of runes was inscribed like a mockery of a crown. They writhed invisibly with the same gold-black radiance which throbbed and pulsed like a strange sun within the ribcage, where there might once have been a heart.

Asharu turned and left the grey hall of serpent-trees. His paces were steady as he ascended the stairway, but he dared not breathe until he reached the corridor at the summit and the doorway had ground shut behind him.

* * *

After his return from his 'audience' with Crom, the first thing which Asharu did was go to bed. He knew that when he told his mother, she would get that blank what-on-earth-did-you- _do_ look and demand all the details. Details he really, _really_ wasn't up to giving before getting a good night's sleep.

It was to a grey morning that he awoke the next day, after a night disturbed by dreams of endless golden cornfields and the black serpents which laired there. Deciding that putting it off any further would just be a waste of time, he descended into the space-expanded trunk where Semiramis' puppet-body was kept and sent her the message that he needed to talk about something.

The conversation went as well as could be expected, given the circumstances.

The basics had been got out of the way first - that apparently the castle was built on top of a fallen Divine Spirit and that it wanted him to free it. Then had been the detailed explanation, a play-by-play of the entire thing, from the opening of the door in the alcove to his leaving the Marble Phantasm. Asharu was thankful that he had put all that effort into practicing Belutu,** as trying to recall in the exacting detail which his mother had asked for would have been much, much harder without it.

The whole conversation took nearly an hour and a half and by the end of it Asharu could see that his mother's mind was whirling with schemes, ideas and plots. Eventually the discussion was curtailed by a vital meeting on Semiramis' end, and she left the puppet-body to sag bonelessly, along with the suggestion that he find whatever he could on the history of the Goblet of Fire.

That, in turn, led to a long and tedious day spent scouring the Hogwarts library for any information on the cup The librarian was of little aid, a thin and sharp-faced woman named Irma Pince whose hair was drawn up in a bun so tight that Asharu was surprised that the hairpin could survive the torsion and who seemed to care more for the sanctity of the books in her domain than for actually helping anyone. It ultimately turned out to be a fruitless endeavour, as the only solid information on the Goblet which the wizards seemed to have was that it had been used to sanctify a number of treaties, that this was the first time it had been used for the Triwizard Tournament - easily explained by the fact that it seemed that the Tournament itself had been hijacked as a gambit to get him back, although by who, exactly, was still up for debate - and that using it required that it have a 'recharge' period of eighty-one days.

He had been thankful that he had taken the time to write out an ofuda before leaving his rooms which would prevent people looking for him from registering his presence, as he had overheard more than one group discussing where he might be in hushed tones at one or another of the library tables.

The only real highlight of the day had been an interesting conversation he had had with an auburn-haired student named Hermione Granger. She walked with a cane and a limp, putting as little weight as possible on that leg. She looked tired, but nevertheless lead him in a spirited debate over the pros and cons of water-element based healing, from a wizarding point of view. She seemed to grasp the principle of how water-based healing magic worked by conceptually 'washing away' ills, and then allowing the body to 'flow' into the spaces which remained, rather than brute-force healing, which simply caused the body's processes to increase in speed.

The issue with the former method was that it required far more skill, as the power had to be precisely controlled and directed, instead of relying on the body to simply restore itself, a level of control that most wizards lacked. Furthermore, it also required an advanced knowledge of the workings of the body itself, the kind usually reserved for doctors and professional surgeons while wizarding healers tended to rely on basic knowledge of anatomy and trust to their magic to fill in the rest. Several times he had to restrain himself from referencing techniques and concepts endemic to advanced healing magecraft, which there was little chance that she would know of and almost none that she would be able to use, himself being the only one he knew of who could use both magecraft and wizardry.

He had asked, once, why she was so interested in healing magic. She had replied with a sad smile and a tap to her left leg, the one which she kept the weight off. "I want to try and help people like me," she had replied, "People who've been hurt and won't get better." Asharu didn't ask for details. The kind of damage that conventional magic couldn't fix wouldn't come from a source that you wanted to talk about.

Time passed swiftly, days melting into weeks of frustration at the utter lack of information on the Goblet, even in the books brought in from outside the castle via owl-order (the british wizards' obsession with using owls as a postal method mystified him). Fortunately, there was respite from the monotony in the form of new acquaintances, both the other Hogwarts champion and another, whom he had met while taking a break from his research outside on one of the towers.

 _The wind tugged at Asharu's braid as he dangled his legs over the parapet of the Astronomy tower. It was mid afternoon and the sun shone wanly over the hills tox the west, too feeble to provide much warmth and not close enough to the horizon to burn in oranges, reds and golds of evening. Faint voices floated up from the grounds below, where children chased one another upon the grass and elder students sat together, talking inaudibly and pointing at each others notes and books._

 _The height reminded him a little of when he had sat on the edges of the hanging Gardens, back in Fuyuki, and watched the city set out beneath him like a kingdom of ants, all hurrying from one place to another. It was especially beautiful at night, almost like a living thing with roads for veins and cars as blood glowing with the lights of their headlamps._

 _Such was his distraction that when his thoughts were interrupted by a shuffle of shoes on stone from behind him, he started violently and whipped his head around to see._

 _Behind him stood a dark-skinned boy around his own age, holding a heavy-looking book and dressed in the black robes and green-and-silver tie of a Slytherin student. His hair was a black fuzz against his skull. He looked surprised to see the magus there, as if this was a part of his daily routine and it had been interrupted by the other boy's presence._

" _Oh. You're here." He sounded as surprised to see Asharu as the magus was to see him. It occurred to him that that was probably the reason that his concealment ofuda hadn't hidden him._

" _Um, do you mind if I sit here?" the other boy asked, gesturing to the parapet next to him._

" _Sure," agreed Asharu, "I'm Asharu._ Not _Harry Potter. You'd hope that people would understand an adoption and a changed name."_

 _The other boy snorted._

" _Yeah, good luck with that. Blaise Zabini, by the way."_

" _Nice to meet you."_

 _The pair lapsed into silence as Blaise manoeuvred himself into place. The book sat on his lap, unopened, as he turned towards the black-haired magus. "So, why are you up here?"_

" _Just for some peace, I guess. Being up high helps me think."_

" _Hmm. Well, what are you thinking about? Do you think that talking about it might help?"_

'OK, that's weird.' _, thought Asharu, suspicious of the other's sudden friendliness._

" _It's nothing, just… history. Why're you here?"_

 _A flicker of something painful passed behind Blaise's eyes. "You've not been here long, have you? You know about the houses?"_

 _Asharu nodded._

" _I'm in Slytherin, and it's full of mini-politicians. You've got to have a 'mask' on all the time and Malfoy doesn't help with how he antagonises the other houses. I come up here to get some air."_

 _The green-eyed wizard nodded sympathetically. The parties which he went to with his mother sometimes were like that, full of the sons and daughters of politicians and corporation leaders trying to imitate their parents. It was tiring, and that was only for a few hours at a time._

 _Blaise shook himself, as if he was shaking off the somber thoughts hinted at by his expression._

" _So. Where did you go before coming here?"_

 _Asharu debated whether or not to tell him the truth and, if so, how much._

" _I went to Ky_ _ōi_ _no Mura in Japan. It's been quite strange, actually, with how different the magic is between here and there."_

 _Blaise cocked his head to the side in an oddly birdlike gesture, conveying an unspoken question._

" _We don't use wands." Asharu elaborated; "We mostly use foci like this" he showed his wooden ring "or ofuda."_

" _Ofuda?" Blaise asked, confusedly._

 _The magus reached inside his coat and palmed one of the dozens of paper strips magically bonded to the inside. He showed the ofuda to Blaise. It was a simple one, designed to be placed on a surface to reinforce it against attack. He usually used it in combination with using his ring focus to raise earthen barriers._

" _Looks like Ancient Runes to me. Less angular, though."_

" _They're traditional kanji." Seeing the incomprehension on the other's face, Asharu elaborated. "The pictographic alphabet of Japanese. They translate roughly to 'Guard this thing, spirits of the earth'."_

" _Huh. That's… different. Doesn't it take a long time to write out all of those?"_

" _Less than you'd think, once you've learned the symbols, and the thing is that you can write out whatever you want to and the ofuda control what happens, instead of you having to learn new spells yourself. That's provided you do it right, of course."_

" _And what happens if you do it wrong?"_

" _Just about anything, really." Asharu answered, "The whole point of an ofuda is to get the magic to obey what is written. If you do it wrong, the magic will still obey, it just won't do what you expect it to."_

" _It must be quite difficult," commented Blaise, squinting at the characters inked on the paper. "What kind of things can you do with them?"_

 _In answer, the green-eyed magus placed the ofuda down on the stone and fluidly dropped off the edge of the tower._

 _Blaise let out a strangled cry and jerked forwards to look over the edge, dislodging his book from his lap in the process and sending it tumbling into space. It did not fall far, though, before it was caught by Asharu, who stood seemingly on thin air, a self-satisfied grin on his face._

" _You…bastard," said the dark-skinned boy, clearly restraining himself from more indecorous language. Asharu simply grinned as he walked upwards towards the top of the tower, as if climbing a set of invisible stairs, and set himself on the edge again._

" _There's an ofuda in each shoe," he explained "They form a platform for me to stand on."_

" _That's no excuse for scaring me like that." replied the other "Can you imagine what they'd say if Harry Potter fell to his death straight after talking with me?"_

" _Oh, so you're worried for me?" teased Asharu, delighting both in the faint blush on the other boy's face and the way that he could feel the stress of weeks of fruitless searching falling away._

 _Blaise thumped him on the arm. "Bastard." he repeated, but there was no heat in it._

 _Asharu rubbed his arm and grinned. This was fun._

He and Blaise had spent more time together after that, when the magus had time and the wizard wasn't studying or in class. Their conversations meandered, from their families - they had discovered something of a common ground in their mothers, even if Semiramis' origins and nature remained firmly under wraps - to their favourite types of magic. When both had realised that the other was bisexual - the consequence of an embarrassing episode involving a prefect, a night-time 'stroll' through the halls and an underpowered area-effect concealment spell - the pair had begun what they jokingly referred to as a flirting-war which had culminated in Blaise's declaration (complete with conjured flowers) that Asharu was his soulmate.

The days and weeks passed in a near-blur of books, parchment (never paper, because apparently the wizards hadn't discovered the joys of writing material that didn't smell when it got wet) and teasing. It was almost a shock to the green-eyed magus when he awoke to the morning of the 24th of November.

The morning of the First Task.

* * *

*Literally 'shield of heaven'. A powerful protective charm channelled through a set of ofuda.

**Literally 'dominion'. Essentially a technique by which one exercises control over their own mind and memories. Like fandom occlumency, except based off of magecraft, rather than wizardry and the fact that using it you can actually edit your own mind, personality and so on. There are techniques by which this kind of control can be extended into the mind of another.

 **A/N:** I cannot stress this enough: Harry/Blaise is not the final pairing, nor is it really any pairing at all. Blaise is, basically, just having fun, as is Harry.

I'm not entirely happy with the ending of this chapter, but I was getting fed up and I knew that if I didn't get the chapter out soon, it was likely that I wouldn't for a few months. And I'm not that evil. Really.

Anyway, I hope that all my delightful readers have had a wonderful new year so far and that their undoubtedly stellar moods will extend to leaving this poor author some reviews. (Engages puppy-dog eyes).


	14. Chapter 14

**A/N:** Sorry for the long wait since the last chapter. A combination of exams, writer's block and boatloads of issues conspired most maliciously to keep me from my work. I have overcome, though, and this chapter is the fruit of my labour. I hope you enjoy and give me lots of juicy, juicy reviews.

 **Disclaimer:** I own neither Harry Potter nor the Nasuverse.

* * *

In the Champions' tent beneath the first Task's stands, Asharu was becoming steadily more and more frustrated.

"I've said before, I don't use a wand. These are my foci."

"Well, I don't know what to do, then," replied the white-haired wandmaker. "I was told to make sure that all of the champions' wands were in good,working order. Now, I can tell that there is magic in these," he gestured to the array of ofuda, imbued paper and the small wooden ring set out on the table, "But I can't do any more than that. If you want to go out there without a wand, I won't stop you, but it'll be on your head if you're injured. And I don't know what the rules say about using foci other than wands."

"Well, I'm sure that won't be a problem for you, eh, Harry? Why, I'm sure that you'll wow us all with magic the likes of which we've never seen before."

The newcomer was a tall and burly man with what looked like the remnants of old muscle hanging on his generous frame, albeit softened by years without exercise. His hair was the colour of straw and hung in meticulous disarray about his head. He wore what looked like a woollen sports jacket beneath an open-fronted robe. Both jacket and robe were striped in slightly faded black and yellow, leaving the overall effect of a slightly overweight wasp.

"You don't mind if I borrow Harry for a bit, do you Ollivander?"

"Very well, there's nothing I can do about Mr. Potter's preferences in foci and I've finished up with the others. I've got a shop to tend to." He straightened up a little and looked over at the far entrance of the tent, where the French champions were waiting for the trumpets which would be the cue to exit the tent.

"Mr. Bernard? I trust that you shall take better care of your wand from now on?" he called over in a raised voice. The blue-clad champion winced a little and nodded embarrassedly, clearly recalling the five-minute tirade that the wandmaker had embarked upon on the subject of proper wand care. With that, the elderly man made his way out of the tent through the other entrance, vanishing from sight.

"That's Ollivander for you." said the yellow-striped man. "But where are my manners, Ludovic Bagman, Department of Magical Sports and Games. It's an honour to meet you in person." He held out a large hand and, after a moment's hesitation, Asharu took it. The man's grip was tight around his hand as he shook, a wide grin breaking out over Bagman's face.

"So, ah, you're ready for the challenge, I hope?"

Yes, thank you." replied Asharu, extricating his hand from the other's grip and beginning to gather up the arrayed foci on the table, slotting the ofuda into their proper places inside his jacket and slipping the the ring back onto the index finger of his left hand.

Bagman looked as if he was going to say something, but then the triumphant notes of a brace of trumpets sounded from outside, prompting a quick shuffle to get into their places in the line-up by the tent entrance. The Beauxbatons champions first, Durmstrang next and Hogwarts and Asharu last.

"Well, best of luck out there Harry, and to all of you," he added hurriedly, raising his voice. "Let's have some good clean competition today." When it seemed that no reply was forthcoming, the yellow-striped man shifted a little uncomfortably. Then the second trumpet blast came, the brazen not cutting the air and signalling the champions to leave the tent. Two by two, school by school, they did.

The aging sun cast long shadows over the grey-green hills and illuminated the faces of the hundreds of spectators in the stands behind him and his fellow champions. A roar of voices sounded there, the words indistinguishable beneath the cacophony.

The wind was cold and biting as it gusted fitfully down from the hills as the young magus scaled the steps to the wooden platform erected in front of the semi-circular seats where the onlookers sat. He was grateful for the warm jacket he was wearing, as he had no intention of wasting power on warming charms directly before what was promised to be a difficult trial. The two Durmstrang students looked quite comfortable in their fur-lined coats discussing something in hushed voices as they made their way to their spot, marked by the Durmstrang two-headed eagle painted onto the wood. The Beauxbatons champions, by contrast, looked quite out of place in their light robes. They seemed at ease with the temperature, likely due to some spell that they had cast on themselves, but the thin garments jarred tremendously with the environment.

Beside him, Katie looked faintly ill as she looked out over the stunted grasses and the heather which rose ahead of them. Asharu couldn't blame her. After his spy-familiars had overheard that the Task would be taking place out on the Scottish moors which sprawled for tens of miles to the north of the castle and that it would somehow involve some of the native creatures of the highlands (and frustratingly little else, as it happened), he taken pains to discover all he could. He had decided to bring Katie in on it - she was, if not a close friend, a friendly acquaintance at least and he had no reason not to help her - and together they had plumbed the depths of Hogwarts' library for information. Katie had managed to solicit some information from Professor McGonagall as well, the severe Scottish witch more than happy to discuss the creatures of her homeland, although she had been a mite suspicious.

The results had not been comforting.

According to what they had discovered, the highlands were the domain of dozens of different types of beasts, monsters and malicious spirits, from the horrific nuckelavee-demons to the sluagh, ghosts of ancient dead which crawled invisibly beneath the earth and which could be summoned up by careless use of magic to infestations of Redcaps.

Blaise had helped out every now and then, but he still had to attend his lessons, while Asharu and Katie didn't - one of the perks of being a Champion, although on his part it was more a matter of not belonging to the school in the first place and conducting his own studies. Blaise had wished them both good luck, having managed to overcome his distrust of Gryffindors at least a little in Katie's case, but had not been allowed to come down to the Champions' tent. He had promised that he would be cheering for them - but mostly Asharu, in his own words and with a crooked grin.

The young magus was jogged from his musings when Bagman, still in his yellow-and-black outfit, ascended the pulpit which had been erected on the gentle slope in front of the champions' stage. After taking a moment to catch his breath, he pulled his wand from his pocket and pointed it at his throat. After an inaudible mutter, he lowered it again before glancing down at something on the podium and speaking.

"Welcome, gentlewizards and witches, to the first task of the 2003 Triwizard Tournament! I, Ludo Bagman of the Department of Magical Sports and Games shall be your commentator and announcer. Before me stand our brave six champions, about to venture out into the high wilds of Scotland, each team in search of the prize which will allow them to continue on through this tournament!"

The crowd, which had fallen quiet at Bagman's magically-amplified voice, let out a deafening roar. The yellow-and-black wizard waited for them to settle down a little before speaking again.

"Now, I'm sure you're all wondering what the task is?" He paused, allowing the crowd to answer, which they did with an overwhelming " _YES!"_

"Well, out on the highlands have been placed three crests, one for each school participating in the tournament. Each is guarded by magical traps and creatures from the great to the small. The task is designed to test the Champions' wits, their resolve, their skill and their courage. The judges-"

At this he gestured at the raised podium to the right of the Champions, opposite the stairs they had scaled to reach their platform. Dumbledore sat there, along with an enormous lady - Madame Maxime, Asharu remembered, the headmistress of Beauxbatons - and a sallow-looking man with a greying goatee and shoulder-length black hair whom the young magus recognised as Igor Karkaroff, the headmaster of Durmstrang. There was another, older man of whom Asharu knew only that he was one of the Tournament's chief organisers. A fifth seat stood at the end of the line, awaiting an occupant.

"Shall assess the Champions on the magical skill and power which they display, as well as the time which it takes them to retrieve their crest.

"Now, before we kick off with the task, there are some rules. First, champions are not permitted to cast spells on one another. Second, spells prohibited by the British Ministry of Magic are not permitted. Lastly, as we are still on Hogwarts grounds, Apparition is not possible. I hope you've got some other transport, or you'll be walking!"

He chuckled at his own joke and an answering ripple of laughter echoed from the stands.

"One last thing. For those of you who are wondering how we're going to be watching all this-" Bagman made an expansive movement with his wand and, as if on cue - and it probably was, for that matter - six great screens of mist erupted into existence behind the announcer. Simultaneously, a golf ball-sized sphere of white quartz zoomed out from under the stands and hovered next to Asharu at head height. Looking at the other champions, each now had an attendant sphere. A gasp and a pointed finger from Katie drew his attention back to the misty screens, each of which now bore an image of one of the champions, from the perspective of the spheres. Interesting. Magical television cameras. An interesting application of the principle of a familiar, if a mundane one.

"This is something which the boffins in the Department of Mysteries cooked up!" announced Bagman, a grin splitting his face from ear to ear with childlike enthusiasm. "Now, without any further ado, let's begin! Champions, you may start on three. One!"

Asharu slipped a hand inside his jacket, reaching for where he knew he kept a seeking-shikigami.

"Two!"

Katie turned to him. "I'll summon my broom. Have you got something you can use?" The black-haired wizard nodded. "I can locate the crest. Give me a moment or two." Bagman raised his wand in the air, pointing towards the sky.

"Three!"

A cannonblast split the air, echoing over the highlands. Asharu was already moving, pulling the shikigami-ofuda from his jacket even as Katie pointed her wand at the castle and called out "Accio Nimbus 1700!" He concentrated on the four-sectioned crest of Hogwarts as he pushed prana out and into the paper tag, causing the ink to glow an emerald-gold, before casting it into the air. There it folded in on itself, transforming into an origami dragonfly, only as long as the magus' index finger. It fluttered around him, awaiting the command to seek its target.

To his right, the French champions had evidently found some way of locating their crest, as both had waved their wands in the air and, with a simultaneous cry of "Vaporo!" had transformed into a pair of plumes of smoke, flying out across the moors. Their crystal spheres followed them, zooming close behind as Bagman commented on their masterful use of fumation.

Returning his attention to himself, Asharu withdrew another oduda, a far more complex one. It had taken nearly an hour and three failed copies to make to a standard that he was happy wouldn't malfunction on him. He hoped it was worth the effort.

"Shikigami: Kami no tenshi*."

With the incantation, the green-eyed wizard slapped the ofuda onto his chest, where it secured itself. A moment passed, and then paper erupted into being, dancing around his body in rings and coalescing into three pairs of paper wings, each longer than he was tall. He moved them experimentally. They responded to his will as easily as moving an arm or a leg.

"And what's this? Mr. Potter has used some kind of magic I've never seen before to make himself a set of wings!" Bagman's jovial voice intruded on Asharu's thoughts "I've heard that the Japanese wizards can do some amazing things with paper, but an animated conjuration? That's something else, wouldn't you agree?"

"Well, way to outdo me," commented Katie, astride a sleek, black-lacquered broomstick. "You ready?"

In answer, Asharu beat his new wings, lifting off the ground. Distantly, he could 'feel' the wind beneath his wings, as if they were partially numb. He could feel a grin worming its way onto his face. There was something about flying, the freedom of it, that touched something deep inside him.

"I'll take that as a yes, then." Katie answered her own question with a mirrored grin. The black-haired magus sent the command to his animated dragonfly-familiar, sending it streaking off across the highlands. With a powerful thrust of his wings, Asharu followed, the broom-riding witch close behind.

* * *

*Formula spirit: paper angel

 **A/N:** A note on conjuration: In this story, it is assumed that wizards' conjuration is either a summoning of far-distant object, or a discipline similar to Projection, the former for 'permanent conjuration' and the latter for temporary conjuration. Although wizards are more easily capable of producing relatively long-lasting projections than magi, this is largely a result of more research into it - magi as a whole regard projection as a feeble trick while wizards make liberal use of it - and the fact the wizards can take advantage of their 'Miracle' alignment to accomplish feats which would be exceeding difficult for a magus with relative ease. A wizard's conjuration is unrelated to the Denial of Nothingness, as it still relies upon prana to create its constructs, as opposed to the True Magic's creation _ex nihilo._

That said, I hope you enjoy the chapter, short as it is.


	15. Epitaph

Hello to all of my wonderful followers. I, unfortunately, do not come with a new chapter but rather with bad news which, most likely, most of you have been expecting for some time; namely that I will almost certainly not be taking up The Serpent's Garden again. I'm coming back to from a while away mostly on the Spacebattles forums, and after having a good long look over TSG I've come to the conclusion that if I was to continue it I would have to effectively re-write the whole thing before I would be satisfied with it, and I'd much rather write something new.

I would just like to thank all of the 80,670 people who have read my story, to the 797 who have followed it, to the 645 who have added it to their favourites and especially to the 303 who have taken the time out of their lives to send me a review or comment, barring of course the occasional whiner. I have been pleasantly surprised to find remarkably few flamers, and I am eternally grateful to this community for encouraging my works.

Sincerely

Dragonofshadows115


	16. Notice of Availability for Adoption

I have been asked whether I'm willing to put _The Serpent's Garden_ up for adoption and I have decided that yes, I am, on two conditions: that the adopter PMs me saying that they're adopting it and sends me a link to their story, and that I'm credited.

I will make available the GDoc copy of _The Serpent's Garden_ as well as my notes on where I was going to take the story to that person, and am willing and happy to be a beta/proof reader.

With hope

Dragonofshadows115

P.S. My sincerest apologies for the fact that this isn't an update.


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